Twelve years on: women's literacy in a Nicaraguan municipality

It is well known that a strong positive correlation exists between maternal education - especially literacy - and indices of health among children. The mechanisms at work in this association, however, remain largely speculative. Circumstances idiosyncratic to Nicaraguan Literacy initiatives since 1979 present a unique opportunity to investigate the link between the literacy of mothers and the health of their children. While much has been written about the Literacy Crusade itself, considerably less information is available about subsequent adult educational provision during the revolution. Virtually nothing has been written in English about the lasting effects of Sandinista literacy initiatives in Nicaragua. This paper reports early work in the literacy component of a project investigating the relationship between maternal literacy and children's health. It outlines the overall design and reports briefly the main literacy results of the pilot phase of a two-year project being undertaken in the environs of Masaya, Nicaragua.