Jesuits and Friends run to break barriers of illiteracy

The Jesuits and Friends’ marathon team will be walking and running the Land Rover Malta Half Marathon and Walkathon to raise funds to break the barriers of illiteracy for 1,000 men and women in Malta. Outgoing rector of St Aloysius College, Fr Patrick Magro, SJ, is running the full marathon, a gruelling 42-kilometre dash from Rabat to Sliema. The funds raised will go towards the reproduction of the award-winning Iċ-Ċavetta Maltese Literacy Toolkit, which was developed by the Jesuit-run Paulo Freire Institute (PFI) to offer Maltese literacy aid to adults and young people between the ages of 16 and 60. The toolkit will help people with low levels of literacy who are facing social exclusion and difficulties to access the labour market. Originally part-financed by the EU’s European Social Fund, the original toolkits were distributed months ago and proved successful. This led to the decision by the director of PFI, Fr Vince Magri, SJ, for the reproduction of the kits, an upgrade of software and hardware required to deliver the training as well as the actual training of more tutors to offer the toolkit to more organisations who work in the field of illiteracy. Why run a marathon to fund...