Hot Off the Press!
ProLiteracy Co-Founder
Ruth Colvin Publishes New Book

A new book by Ruth J. Colvin, the founder of Literacy Volunteers of America, has just been published by Syracuse University Press. “Off the Beaten Path: Stories of People Around the World” details the many encounters Colvin had as she taught others to read and write. From the Sunshine Coast of South Africa to a remote ashram in India, Colvin and her husband, Bob Colvin, have traveled around the world, visiting 62 countries and providing literacy training in 26 developing countries. The book includes stories about a holy man in India, a banned leader and a revolutionary in the apartheid system of South Africa, lepers in India and Madagascar, Chinese Communists, and survivors of Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

EXCERPT from “Off the Beaten Path: Stories of People Around the World”:

“The island of Madagascar was once 90 percent rainforest, with an abundance of wildlife and exotic birds. Now it is less than 10 percent rainforest. Over the years, slash-and-burn agriculture has destroyed millions of trees, leaving the red clay bare, eroding the steep mountainsides into the oceans. The inhabitants continue to cut most of the remaining trees for their simple houses and for charcoal, their main source of cooking fuel.

We drove four hours east from Antananarico, the capital, over the only paved two-lane road in the country. We drove over hills and between mountains and saw terraced rice paddies and traditional villages with thatch-roofed plaster huts, and always people walking, carrying heavy loads on their heads….

Our small hotel was right on the edge of the reserve, at the side of a red-dirt road in a dense grove of trees…Because this was not the tourist season, there were only six other guests, most of them French. We joined them for a simple dinner. Then we went off with our guide…to explore the after-dark life of the rainforest…We were looking for lemurs, the monkeylike primates that are found only in Madagascar, and for tiny half-inch tree frogs…”

In 2002, Literacy Volunteers of America merged with Laubach Literacy to become ProLiteracy.

The recipient of nine honorary doctorates, Colvin was given the highest award for volunteerism in the United States, the President’s Volunteer Action Award, in 1987. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006, and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1991.