If a child can't read, he/she won't do well in school and the probability of becoming a successful adult is adversely affected. This assertion is what motivated the leadership of Unity Christian Church in Whitehaven to launch a literacy intervention campaign.

Rev. Jack Bomar, pastor of Unity Christian Church in Whitehaven, prays for the children and adults of Memphis who have a difficult time reading. He said the church's literacy campaign is sure to raise the literacy rate. (Photos by Wiley Henry)

Rev. Bomar asks those attending the community prayer breakfast to consider supporting the church's literacy campaign that Marva Griffin (second from right) and Rosemary Nelson are championing.

Reginald French, a former administrator and aide to Mayor Willie Herenton, introduces himself at the community prayer breakfast.

"We're changing our literacy rate," said the church pastor, Rev. Jack Bomar. "We're 30 years behind in learning. Everything we've tried hasn't worked."

That's why Bomar, along with the "Yes We Can" literacy campaign spearheaded by activists Marva Griffin and Rosemary Nelson, hosted a community prayer breakfast Saturday morning with literacy in mind.

The breakfast is held each Saturday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Griffin, the executive director of "Yes We Can" and the church's vice president of training, offered a few nuggets on how to educate children.

There are several factors that contribute to the problem, Griffin said. "Fifty to 60 percent of high school students in Memphis City Schools are dropping out; one out of three adults can't read, schools are overcrowded; and teachers don't last but 5 years in the system."

She said students most likely are failing in society because the exams they take and pass in school don't always equip them to handle problems that come with adulthood.

Quoting the late Marva Collins, an innovative educator who started the Westside Preparatory School in Chicago, Griffin said, "There is a brilliant child inside every student."

She said the goal of the literacy program "is to educate, not incarcerate."

According to Griffin, the majority of African Americans in jail can't read and are unemployable. She said tutors will train students how to learn and study for themselves no matter who their teachers are in school.

"Students have come to me when they don't understand a word when reading. It stops them in their tracks. That's called the Ômisunderstood word,'" Griffin said.

The problem can be traced back to the absence of phonics in schools, the educator said. Phonics is a reading developmental program using the Alphabetic Principle, which is the systematic and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.

"Phonics were taken out of the school system when children were learning," said Griffin, who wants to insert the program back into the school curriculum.

"We can change the literacy rate every 11 weeks by increasing the grade level by 1 1/2 to 3 years," said Bomar, guaranteeing its success. "This is our mission. We have the answers to the challenges of literacy and we can back it up."

Bomar said the weekly prayer breakfast began as a men's ministry and morphed into a church-wide ministry with a renewed mission to keep the community informed about topics such as education.

He said the church is empowering volunteers and training them to go into the public school system to help improve literacy. "The particular techniques we use will help to remove the barriers to learning," Bomar said.

"It's one thing to preach the gospel and another thing to teach it. There is an answer (to literacy) regardless of the statistics."

(For more information on the literacy campaign, contact Marva Griffin at 615-720-1747 or Rosemary Nelson at 901-606-4939.)