The 1964 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding

Before she began at the age of 72 the literacy work in India that has absorbed her talents for the last 12 years, WELTHY HONSINGER FISHER zestfully led a full and fruitful life dedicated to furthering understanding among peoples. Feeling a sense of "rebirth" in the wonder and newness of strange places, in challenging work, and in a deeply shared marriage, she counts several "true reincarnations within one long lifetime."

Born in Rome, New York, on September 18, 1880, she was the petted youngest child of her father's later years and resembled him. A chain of blacksmith shops provided for the family a comfortable living. The big Honsinger house—with a Bible, dictionary and world atlas usually open on the library table—was a favorite gathering place in the town where the young people could play croquet on the lawn and sing around the square piano. Religion was a part of daily life; the father led morning prayers and each child read from his own Bible a verse from the chapter for the day.

Passing her girlhood in an "orderly, leisurely manner," WELTHY attended public grade school in Rome and went on to the local high school. She showed a flair for writing and, endowed with a naturally good voice, won local recognition as a singer. Though desiring an operatic career, she agreed to attend college, fulfilling her mother's dream that all her daughters should have degrees. She was studying at Syracuse University when her father died. Now coming to know her small, strong-minded mother better, she found a stalwart friend and confidante whose trust strengthened her courage and determination.

At 21, she embarked upon a teaching career. Her first job was handling 15 pupils in a one-room school in Haverstraw, New York, called Rosebud College. There she had her first experience with prejudice: the one Negro student ran away, fearing blame for the misdeed of a white student, and WELTHY brought him back and defended him.

As an avocation she started to study piano and, after finding a famous teacher at Carnegie Hall enthusiastic about her voice, began serious voice training as well. Walking five miles daily to Rosebud College and commuting to New York for lessons soon proved too strenuous so she transferred as a teacher to Englewood High School in the city. A summer in Europe was managed next. Returning full of "the sound of Paris" and with a new fluency in French, she took a weekly subscription for the Metropolitan Opera and resumed voice lessons.

Then, at Carnegie Hall, she attended a missionary meeting led by the Reverend Dr. Robert Speers. Speaking to a hushed mass of eager students on the kinship of mankind under God and the greatness of Western Christian education, he concluded: "If every missionary around the world should die tonight, you college men and women would fill their places." WELTHY HONSINGER felt an unexpected response. She knew she could teach and manage children and she longed to offer her life in some way to the service of God—to live in the "Christ way" her father had spoken of so often.

She wanted to sing opera and she had a tempting proposal of marriage but one morning she made the unshakable decision to become a missionary. Her voice teacher, her colleagues at Englewood School, and her mother's friends all tried to dissuade her. To the latter her mother replied firmly: "Whatever WELTHY does, she has my prayerful backing."

In 1906 she sailed on the small Japanese steamer Tango Maru from Seattle across the Pacific to Yokohama and Shanghai. Her destination was Nanchang in Kiangsi Province, a 700-year-old walled city of one million inhabitants, 600 miles inland from Shanghai, where she would be headmistress of the Baldwin Mission School. There were seven other Americans living in the city. At Baldwin, known as Bao Lin or "The School of the Protecting Spirit," the faculty, household staff and girls were all Chinese.

Breaking precedent the new headmistress insisted her Chinese associate should live with her. She had many plans for expanding and improving the school but recognized she first should understand the background of her students, their language, customs and emotions. She spent six hours a day with a master of classics learning Mandarin. He chose for her the Chinese name HAN WEI-LO, selecting for HONSINGER one of the "100 surnames" and for WELTHY a transliteration of good meaning. More than language, she sought to learn from her tutor the special significance of words—the nuances.

Of the implications of her work in those early days in China she later wrote in her book, To Light a Candle: "The more I knew and the more I saw, the more I felt that the education of the women of China was of paramount importance. Old China, fascinating and otherworldly, was changing. A new China must emerge. . . . The best of the West must be brought into the East so that transition would not mean anarchy and foreign conquest, but a strong nation which would preserve its arts and beauties and abolish its slaveries, the terrible poverty of its masses, and the subjection of its women."

When WELTHY HONSINGER had arrived as headmistress there were 45 pupils and four teachers and instruction extended only from the first through the eighth grades. Under her aegis enrollment was increased to 88. A high school was added—the first to offer music and science and to enroll girl students from all classes of society. She increased fees for the rich girls and instituted scholarships for poor ones, adding a workshop where they could make things for sale outside. Essential changes such as sanitary garbage disposal to safeguard health were more difficult but eventually accomplished. The achievement most satisfying to her was the naming of her Chinese associate as Assistant Principal. For the first time a Chinese woman became a central force and power in a mission school; the most difficult hurdle was acceptance of her authority by the Chinese community. Clashing in such instances as this with traditional attitudes that shackled women, WELTHY was careful to observe the Chinese premium on courtesy, remaining firm on principle but trying never to offend when it came to form. Close to her heart were the four discarded girl babies she took in to raise as her "adopted" daughters.

Her sense of mission was crystallized by three signposts that gave her final bearings in China. The first was a sign in the extraterritorial settlement in Shanghai excluding Chinese which she felt must be obliterated "in spirit and in fact." The second was also a sign, inscribed in gold letters on bright red paper over the lintel of a small village house—"In this family there is a Ph.D.," indicating the respect and immense importance accorded to learning. The third was a question: a teacher in Chinese Literature at Bao Lin asked whether Americans also had the moon. Learning, she felt, could erase prejudice, enhance the lives of illiterate millions, and open the outside world to China and China to the outside world.

"Spiritually color-blind," as she puts it, and following Christ and Confucius, she considered all men brothers within the four seas. Her private aims, beliefs and purposes, she acknowledged, were firmly instilled in childhood and her adult intellect grew naturally in an environment of good health, good humor and a "cat's curiosity."

"Looking back," she later wrote, "I think the main reason I could take a great deal from any environment was not a childlike willingness to learn, but the fact that I did not incline to doubt myself and my roots, who and what I was. We did not question our souls so interminably in my early days. I accepted myself, I admired my Puritan ancestors, respected my strict, small-town American upbringing, believed in my old-time Methodist religious teaching. My contradictory worldliness, ambition, and love of pretty things seemed natural to me. Modern concern with equality and freedom for women, with education, with the expansion of the religious spirit through all and any sincere worship, did not conflict in me with inherited or older conceptions. I could also love all of China without conflict, the old and the new, the faults and the virtues. Of such was mankind . . . ."

At the beginning of her fifth year in China Bao Lin burned to the ground. Students who lived in Nanchang moved home and for the others a small house was rented and enough books and clothes were bought to enable them to carry on their schooling. Leaving her Chinese assistant in charge, WELTHY HONSINGER—in a borrowed dress, Chinese slippers and one carryall crammed with going away presents and a few items of clothing—returned to the United States to raise funds to rebuild the school.

After a refreshing reunion with her mother and sisters and in a new wardrobe they bought her, she embarked on a whirlwind schedule. Giving as many as 15 talks a week, she opened most of her meetings with a song and closed them with a musical benediction. When some missionaries criticized her chic appearance she insisted her piety was her own and was relieved to find that an effective fund raiser did not have to look "pathetic." Money flowed in as the miles piled up. Her salary as missionary had been US$600 a year in the field but now was US$450 so the extra US$2.50 she usually received for each lecture and reimbursement for her expenses on the road were welcome supplements. Invited to sing at a gathering of Methodist laymen, she first met Dr. Frederick Bohn Fisher with whom, more than a decade later, she was to share her life.

At the end of 15 strenuous months and 600 meetings she had raised the funds she needed. An architect had given her blueprints for three buildings and she had two recruits for her staff—one was her sister—and both would pay their own fare.

A troubled empire when she left, China was a turbulent republic on her return. While she had been pleading for funds to educate young Chinese women the revolution had been accomplished and schools for girls were being fostered by the new government in many areas.

Bao Lin grew again—considerably larger and better than before. The main buildings were of solid brick. A kindergarten was opened to all local children, including those from squatters' huts. In 1913 the first five-member high school class was graduated; four became teachers and one a welfare worker. Larger classes followed and many of the young women went out to serve the new republic.

In 1917 WELTHY HONSINGER felt she had done all she could. Bao Lin was a Chinese school and should have as its headmistress a woman of new China. Her dear friend and understudy was accepted and ready to take over. It was a wrench to leave but her own country was at war and she wanted to take her part.

The YWCA accepted Miss HONSINGER's services upon her arrival in the United States and by May 1918 she was in uniform as a member of the War Work Council on her way through submarine-infested waters to Europe. At the port of Le Havre she found Chinese coolies unloading cargo who pressed her eagerly to tell them in Chinese where they were. At the munitions factory in central France where she was to do welfare work were more Chinese to whom she tried to explain why the foreigners paid them so well to have their work done while they went to be killed.

In 1920, to prepare herself for "starting over," she spent an aunt's generous gift on a trip around the world, visiting Japan, Korea, her old home in China, Singapore, Malaya, Burma and India, where she again met Dr. Fisher and his wife as fellow Methodists. She returned by way of Palestine, Egypt and France.

Back home she edited a monthly magazine for young people, World Neighbors, received an honorary degree from Syracuse University, lectured, authored four books for children and two for adults String of Chinese Pearls and Beyond the Moon Gate.

Always busy and never managing "to feel as I was supposed to about my chronological age," she habitually expected the future to bring some new, high adventure. She was 44 years old when the Right Reverend Frederick Bohn Fisher, then widowed, asked her to be his wife. They were married on June 18, 1924 and soon thereafter sailed for India via China.

Bishop Fisher had gone to India in 1904 as a deacon in the small Methodist Church of Agra. Similar to his second wife-to-be, he had first engaged a Persian scholar to teach him Urdu. Soon he began inviting Hindus, Moslems and anyone else interested in the search for religious truth to his home and from them gained wisdom that cast new light on the Christian scriptures for him. Of her husband, Mrs. FISHER writes, "he combined mystic and intellectual, organizer and administrator, the seeker of inspiration and the practical man in his person." While he studied the East and sought a meeting of East and West, he did not neglect his mission and his church was filled.

Elected at 38 to the Episcopacy of the Methodist Episcopal Church by the highest vote on record, he was the youngest bishop in a century. Returning as bishop of India and Burma, he could take no part in nationalist aspirations that fired all India but worked instead for self-determination within the Indian Methodist Church. Beginning at once by appointing as many Indians as possible to head missionary schools and colleges, he earned a reputation as a great Christian liberal. After his first wife died of typhus in Darjeeling he continued to preach and talk the length and breadth of India, and urged his own countrymen to "keep up with India." When funds ran short he was asked to return to the United States to help in a nationwide campaign. There he met again and married WELTHY HONSINGER.

In 1924, after a joyful visit to Bao Lin and a quick trip further into the interior, the FISHERS stopped briefly in Manila, Singapore and Colombo before debarking and traveling from South India by rail to Calcutta. Though accustomed to public life as headmistress of Bao Lin and as a lecturer on international affairs, Mrs. FISHER’s position as a bishop's wife was a new departure. The couple were "personages" and their home a public place. They moved in the concentric rings of Calcutta society, sharing their time with the university community, the British quarter and mission groups. Their congenia.l associations were mostly with Indians, some non-Christian thinkers. WELTHY’s own closest friends were among the followers of Gandhi. As she had done in China, in her first weeks in India she began to study Hindi and Bengali, though English was the lingua franca of the educated classes.

The Bishop's work required much travel in India and Burma. With the couple on trips went the then necessary bedrolls, pillows, and lunch basket, a few clothes, their typewriters and "the all-important tin book trunk." Before each departure, whether for a short or long trip, the Bishop was ready 30 minutes to an hour early and the FISHERS sat together in meditation. "What were we going for? What did we hope for, expect to contribute? What did we want to bring home with us in our notebooks, our hearts and lives?" they asked themselves. Departures were "calm as a prayer."

Arrivals were public occasions. Usually met by deputations and led directly to a receiving line, the Bishop then proceeded to conferences with men while Mrs. FISHER presided over women's meetings of missionaries, wives of missionaries, teachers and nurses, or the wives of teachers and doctors from the church's hospitals and schools. The custom had been for the Indian women to remain quiet while the bishop's wife and other foreigners did all the talking, but Mrs. FISHER again broke precedent. "We had a great lift, almost a shock," said the woman whose husband later became the first Indian bishop. "Mrs. FISHER asked the opinion of the Indian women. And she insisted that we stand up and give it. It was the first time."

Aside from the normal duties of a bishop—handling conferences, internecine struggles, finances, tending to the temporal and spiritual well-being of his flock, and "preaching in the box buildings our church put up all over the place in complete disregard of indigenous architecture and local traditions"—Frederick Fisher had a broader conception of his function in India. He wanted to cooperate with all Indians who were groping for a better way of life, and considered it his privilege and responsibility to help non-Christians realize common ideals rather than trying only to convert them to outward orthodoxy. Seeking this fellowship "not by destroying other religions but by respecting and honoring them," in India the FISHERS were attuned to Hindus and Moslems and in Burma to Buddhists.

Of an Himalayan journey WELTHY wrote a seventh book, The Top of the World, telling of many things later made familiar through the conquest of Everest—"of the prayer wheels revolving endlessly by mountain streams in the wildest places, of lamasaries lost in craggy isolation, the character of the country and its hardy inhabitants."

In the winter of 1925 the FISHERS visited South Africa on the behalf of the Indians to study the effects of the proposed "anti-Asiatic legislation" on the sizable community of Indian settlers. They routed themselves through Australia to see that continent.

In India they valued greatly the friendship of three men. One was Charles F. Andrews, who had come to India as a young Anglican priest and later resigned his priesthood to teach the Gospel in India as a servant of the Indians. Another was Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize-winning poet of India, whom Mrs. FISHER described as "aristocrat, educator, innovator, intellectual and spiritual influence—a seer, not a visionary seer, reaching up for spiritual things from the platform of the real world." Another was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, "within whom dwelt the most glorious soul of all." Mrs. FISHER found in him "a man of two natures, one renunciatory, the other driving along practical lines to conquer vast political problems." He was to her, in both respects, "the very essence of modern India."

Bishop Fisher's mission to Indianize the Church was fulfilled in 1930 when an Indian was elected to replace him. Urged by the University of Michigan, he took up the pulpit in Ann Arbor, a liberal parish in a university community. WELTHY became deeply involved in church and college projects and she "found the East in the Middle West"—students from Siam, South Africa, Ceylon and China who were quickly welcomed to the FISHER hearth.

The FISHERS next moved to Detroit where he revived and rebuilt the Central Church. Detroit spoke a language different than they had known before, and Friday evenings were set aside for study of the city. To gain knowledge they met with labor union leaders, Negroes, Poles, industrialists, and Chinese. To serve a culturally complex community, Central Church became no longer a mere meeting house but a suitably beautiful sanctuary. On Good Friday morning in 1938 WELTHY FISHER became a widow. For her husband's bronze plaque in the Central Church Sanctuary she chose an inscription from a poem by his friend Tagore: "And when you had taken your leave, I found God's footprints on my floor."

Her loneliness intense, she sought to find her way back to living by returning to the sources of her "grown-up self"—to China where she had been "reborn" as HAN WEI-LO, to India where she had been "reborn" as WELTHY FISHER—and by visiting new countries of which she knew nothing. In India she made a pilgrimage to the Himalayan heights where, at 8,400 feet, just as the sun was coming up over Everest and Kachenjunga, she stood and cast the ashes of her beloved husband. She also spent long hours with Gandhi at his austere ashram at Sevagram in Central India.

WELTHY FISHER was soon aware that a purposeless and frivolous existence was not for her; she had to work and study. Over the ensuing years she visited both familiar and unfamiliar countries for one purpose or another, lectured and wrote. In her "school years"—1942-43, 1945-46, and 1949-50—she spent "semesters" studying the educational systems of Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and the Middle East. In 1950 a broken knee did not deter her from going ahead on crutches through Greece, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Israel.

On December 14, 1947 Mrs. FISHER sat again with Gandhi in India reminiscing tenderly of loved ones who were gone and of times and hopes they had shared. As they parted, he took her hands and said, "When you come back to live in India, go to the villages and help them. India is the village." On January 30, 1948 Gandhi was dead from an assassin's bullet.

Fourteen years after her husband's death and four years after Gandhi’s, WELTHY FISHER returned to India to start a new life. She was 72 years of age but felt young and vigorous and, in the two-year-old Republic of India which neither her husband nor Gandhi had to lived to know, she looked for fresh inspiration.

During the first week in New Delhi a telegram brought an invitation from Dr. Arthur T. Mosher, Principal of the Agricultural Institute at Allahabad, asking her to serve as consultant to a training program for leaders being sent by Government to learn how to train teachers in villages to instruct illiterates. Recalling Gandhi's plea, Mrs. FISHER was on the train the next evening for Allahabad.

Literacy work was first undertaken in the last quarter of the 19th century by missionaries as a church activity so that villagers could read the Gospel. A mass literacy campaign begun in the early part of the 20th century in the Punjab by Lala Laypat Riu faded out due to lack of trained teachers and appropriate reading material. In the early 1920's Rabindranath Tagore incorporated adult literacy as an important part of his welfare activities at Sri-niketan, and in the 1930's in the villages around Sevagram Gandhi included literacy work along with his basic education in crafts, health and preparation of the masses for political freedom. Similar efforts were made then and later by many others in different parts of India. In 1935 the Indian National Congress formed a national planning committee chaired by Jawaharlal Nehru which included recommendations for adult education in its report.

With independence in 1947 India became the world's largest democracy, but among its 435 million people 320 million were illiterate. Reasoning that the new generation demanded first priority, major emphasis—nearly 70 per cent—was on children and young men and women. While adult education was accepted as an important activity of the community development program, and for the first time received attention, sponsorship and financial help on a national level, only a small share of available funds was allotted for this purpose. India, the planners assumed, could rest for a time on its "cultural literates," who could not read or write but otherwise were well-versed in their country's cultural heritage and passed it on from generation to generation. This assumption, however, quickly proved wrong. Though elections for federal and state legislatures were held with remarkable success by using symbols, mass participation commonly ended there because of lack of knowledge and understanding of "what to do and how" on the part of the illiterate villagers.

Soon some 130 governmental and voluntary agencies joined in the drive to promote adult literacy. Emphasis was on young adults who had their lives before them as householders, parents and citizens.

In 1952, under the auspices of the United States aid program, Dr. Frank Laubach was invited to India to help in preparing literature, charts, primers, readers and simple teaching techniques for adult literacy work. It was to instruct the first group of trainees, using the new methods and materials prepared by Dr. Laubach, that Mrs. FISHER was invited to Allahabad.

The pilot project, under the administration of Dr. T. A. Koshy, was hampered because most villagers could not read and he and WELTHY FISHER threshed out the overall aim of giving teachers an approach "based on empathy strong enough to penetrate tradition."

On February 13, 1953 Mrs. FISHER began her training program on the wide verandah of the half-bungalow assigned to her. Her pupils were 40 highly educated MAs and BAs who were wholly unprepared for the work they would be sent to do—to train village teachers. "We are," she began on the first morning, "starting something new in India." Work in the villages, she continued, required dedication and dedication came from religion. Gandhi had taught harmonizing together. Should they begin, she asked, with his prayers excerpted from five religions? The group decided instead that she should name the theme and they would form a small committee to choose each day a Hindu chant, a Moslem prayer, a Christian hymn, a reading from the Granth Sahib of the Sikhs, or quotations from Zend-Avesta or Buddha. Thereafter, following an hour of such meditation, work began each morning "in a mood of peace and occasionally of exaltation.

The first job was to produce charts of the Hindi language. Choosing from Dr. Laubach's 2,000 common household words, flipbooks made by Tagore for new literates, and a word list used by British government institutes, the group made up their own vocabulary. Some members fanned out to villages to study what the villagers wanted most to learn about. The answer was agriculture, religion and, surprisingly, movies of which they had only heard but wanted to know more. Many of the trainees had been born in villages and at first were reluctant to discuss new ideas relating to a familiar subject. Gradually they came to appreciate that they had been educated away from their rural origins and must go back to the villages of the new India with a new approach.

The objective from the start was "functional literacy." Villagers must be taught not only to read and write, but through reading and writing to understand and face the problems and responsibilities of living. Recognizing that workworn men and women could not be expected to give their dawn or evening hours to become literate in order to read nursery tales meant for children, the group searched for books in simple language from which adults could gain useful knowledge. Among readers already available, they found fewer than half passed the test of readability—holding interest while not exceeding the written vocabulary for grownup students. Clearly more were needed and, with the new word list, Mrs. FISHER wrote the first book, We, the Government.

As the weeks passed, the staff grew, though individuals came and went because of long-term commitments elsewhere. Never stopping even over holidays, the group experimented with all sorts of teaching aids, including flashcards, flannelgraphs and puppets. Improved primers were developed to teach several lessons at once. Remembering the tin trunks she and her husband had taken on so many journeys, Mrs. FISHER designed a Tin Trunk Library holding 50 books. Painted bright red, black and white, these Libraries went into villages on the backs of bicycles. Literacy Kits were devised, each made up of blackboard, chalk, eraser, slates, pencils, colored charts of the alphabet, basic books and a Coleman-type kerosene lantern which shed the brightest light ever seen in many villages. With a Literacy Kit one teacher was equipped to teach 25 students at a time.

Trained teachers were soon lured away by other agencies, but two Indians who joined the project in the early days became mainstays. A. R. Siddiqi, a tactful and good humored former teacher of dairying in Bihar proved particularly effective in persuading doubting villagers to cooperate. E. C. Shaw, who had worked in villages for a Methodist mission, was a handyman who could build everything from latrines to platforms for wells and he always pointed out to visitors what villagers had done themselves.

Early in 1954 the group was shocked to learn that the Institute thought of their program as "temporary" and financial support would soon be terminated. To Mrs. FISHER this was a challenge. Too much had been accomplished in less than a year to let the effort die. In fact, she and her colleagues optimistically concluded, the program had outgrown its humble half-bungalow abode and needed its own identity. For the interim they moved to a small rented house near the Institute, and WELTHY FISHER once again set out for the United States to secure funds. The trustees of World Literacy, Inc. accepted her proposals and underwrote the budget for US$45,000 which she presented.

Back in India, to accommodate the staff that had increased to nearly 40, the one small house was expanded by the addition of tents and by whitewashing and adding to an old garage a lean-to to make a veranda for classes. For out-of-doors companionship there was a garden with a teahouse in the center. The lease ran for only a year and their sense of "temporariness" was real until a third home was found in the heart of Allahabad. It was comfortable and large enough for the staff and thirty trainees, but all agreed an urban setting was not the place for their work. Then, while she was on a visit to Lucknow, Governor Munshi of Uttar Pradesh urged Mrs. FISHER to consider moving to his capital.

Hesitant to uproot the program but at the same time reminding herself that Gandhi's plea was for "a concept, not a place," she took stock. She had very little money and an enormous dream. Though her health was good, she was at an age where caution should be exercised. Was she sure that she could help or should this monumental task of achieving universal literacy in India be left to the eager and young? Then she remembered an astrologer in Cairo had read her fate in the stars and predicted a long life—"ninety-three, maybe ninety-four years." Time enough to stay, she decided, and to build.

Near Lucknow land was not readily available but it was cheap. She, Siddiqi and Shaw began to commute from Allahabad—rising at three in the morning to make the 140-mile trip before bullocks blocked the road—to search for a site. After careful thought and meditation—for WELTHY FISHER "a well-developed mental discipline, applicable as readily to practical problems as to spiritual ones"—they settled on 10 acres outside Lucknow on the Kanpur Road. Thereafter, once a week, month after month, the three traveled to Lucknow to negotiate. It took a year to acquire the small parcels of land that comprised the whole, but in the spring of 1956 the land was theirs.

Mrs. FISHER remembered her husband saying missionaries made a great mistake in locking up deeds to hospitals, schools and other mission properties in safe-deposit boxes in New York City. This deed, she vowed, would be a gift from America to an independent India and be held by a board of Indians. Invited to the All-India Adult Education Conference, she told Dr. Armanatha Jha of her plan. One of the finest educators in the country, he agreed to be the first chairman of the India Literacy Board and headed it until his death. As the Indian counterpart to World Literacy—now World Education—this body directs the operation locally and holds title to the property.

In June 1956 Mrs. FISHER made her last pre-dawn journey from Allahabad. There were no buildings on the land near Lucknow, but the group had temporary headquarters less than one mile away. Building plans drafted by government architects in New Delhi did not convey to Mrs. FISHER a sense of India or the work. She turned to Laurie Baker, an English Quaker who had given up a rising architectural career in England to dedicate his life to India. After a week of consultation, Mr. Baker produced plans for dormitories, staff houses, an administration and classroom building and an open-air theater—primarily for puppets "who spoke to the people in their own terms." Enclosed in a roughly oval form with streets curving and meandering, the buildings were designed for "function, grace and unostentatious comfort." In the center was a House of Prayer for All Peoples. Mrs. FISHER envisioned the finishing touches. Murals would be of "Hindi charts, puppets, men, women and children learning from their teachers, all sitting cross-legged on the ground and in summation a turbaned man reading." A wall in front would "enclose our peace and tell our purpose." The gate would be wide so that the wall would shut no one out. Through it would be visible the flag of India flown from a staff planted in a flower bed.

On September 13, 1956 Mrs. FISHER turned the first clod of earth just to the right of the gate that was to bear in Hindi the words "Saksharta Niketan," and in English "Literacy House." A few weeks later she moved into the first interior room completed, which happened to be the ladies rest room furnished with only a commode. Adding a gaily colored screen, a cot and desk she became, as she had in China, "overseer of the overseer of an assistant overseer who oversaw the contractor." Keeping in touch daily with the work at the temporary headquarters, she concentrated on concrete and wires, windows and pipes and spent thousands of hours bent over blueprints, measuring and translating to make her dream come true. The dream was modified only to conciliate two powerful influences—too much climate and not enough cash.

Normal work, meanwhile, went on from the bustling temporary headquarters. Teachers trained in short, intensive courses went forth to villages. Tin Trunk Libraries went out on bicycles to nearby bazaars for an afternoon and evening of borrowing and reading, or traveled for thousands of miles in a field-work van donated by the women of Greenwich, Connecticut. Books were commissioned, written, published and distributed. The fortnightly newspaper, Ujala, meaning Light, went with the Literacy Kits and Libraries so that villagers could keep up with the news as soon as they learned to read.

By the late spring of 1957 the administration building and library were completed, with an arched area between where brick benches under the sky would seat an audience of 300 in front of a covered stage. On the morning of the formal opening all who belonged to Literacy House went together into one of the classrooms for their shared meditation. Mrs. FISHER chose the theme that life goes forward on the steppingstones of the past and of ideals.

Prominent in the exhibition prepared for the event was a graphic representation of the symbols of Literacy House: a man, a book and a candle. On a banner was printed in Hindi the phrase "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." An awning in bright designs protected the open-air theater. Copies of the first books were on display with a small sign noting that sales had exceeded 93,000. The editorial staff was seated at their desks to demonstrate how forthcoming books were to be prepared and how the newspaper, Ujala, was edited. In the library was Mrs. FISHER’s great extravagance—she had insisted upon steel stacks to protect precious books from termites. Here were 700 carefully selected volumes sent by the Asia Foundation and a new set of Encyclopedia Britannica and the Book of Knowledge contributed through friends in the United States. At the door of the library stood a pick-up truck ready to load a Tin Trunk Library. A large and happy crowd was on hand to receive the official guests, among whom were the Governor of Uttar Pradesh and his wife. Singing and speeches were followed by a gayly satirical puppet show on the dowry system.

Another important ceremony was held in March 1959 when Dr. R. Radhakrishnan, then Vice-President of India, dedicated the House of Prayer. As Mrs. FISHER had planned it stood in the center of Literacy Village, the four doors welcoming people from north, south, east and west. Octagonal glass walls encompassed a bare hall with polished steps around a small pool with a low fountain. Symbolic of its simplicity was a thatched roof "curving upward like a pagoda to culminate in a finger toward God."

In the ensuing years Mrs. FISHER secured funds to develop the 10-acre plot into a combined campus and village. Inside its Chinese-style gateway, neat red-brick classrooms and workshops, hostels for 100 students—nearly half for women—staff residences for 10 families, and eight family quarters for workmen have been added, a building or two each year.

The basic program is still to train men and women who will go out to teach, or train others to teach, illiterates. From the portals of Literacy House and the earlier establishments in Allahabad have come nearly 7,000 trained teachers. They, and teachers they in turn have trained, have taught an estimated 1.5 million villagers and poor laborers to read and write.

Trainees come to Literacy House from all over India under the sponsorship of both government and non-government agencies. They may be teachers or assistant supervisors of schools, social workers or district welfare workers, home science instructors, village or cooperative workers, block development supervisors, health visitors, or clergymen.

Constantly experimenting and improving, Literacy House has evolved a new Functional Literacy Teaching Method which enables an illiterate adult in 10 months to become sufficiently literate to read a paper and write a letter. Literacy House runs its own adult schools in 62 neighboring villages. City illiterates have not been forgotten. Five urban schools have been established in Lucknow. In collaboration with the State Labor Welfare Department, 11 night schools for men and nine for women are conducted in working class areas of nearby Kanpur. Urban night school teachers receive a nominal monthly stipend of Rs.25 (US$5); to expect volunteers to teach regularly month in and month out with no remuneration, Mrs. FISHER feels, is neither practical nor realistic. Teachers from Literacy House have also been invited to teach in many other states.

A massive program was initiated by the Government of India in 1958 to delegate power and responsibility to local village governments. Literacy House was selected as one of the non-official institutions in Uttar Pradesh to conduct orientation training for Block Development Committee members on the charges of their new offices. Every eight days throughout the year a group of 25 to 50 such village leaders come to Literacy House to learn how democracy works. Nearly 3,000 village leaders have already been trained.

On invitation of the Central Social Welfare Board Literacy House has undertaken two programs. One is on-campus offering women whose education was interrupted an accelerated study program of four years of grade school in two years. Training to become rural teachers, village workers' midwives or other specialists is also offered. The other in five neighboring villages offers classes in arts, crafts and home science for women who have primary home responsibilities. Also assisting in the Community Development Program, instructors from 13 social education organizers' training centers in India often train in teaching methods at Literacy House.

Literacy House has published more than 60 easy-to-read books on subjects relating to health and sanitation, farming, and citizenship. The first book by Mrs. FISHER explaining India's democratic structure and the place of its citizens in it, was awarded a prize by the Government of India which ordered 50,000 copies for distribution throughout the country. Initially produced by teachers, most books are now written in the School of Writing established in 1958 with assistance from the Ford Foundation. Two or three times each year selected journalists and writers are brought for an intensive three-months workshop. They not only study the techniques of writing for new literates but also conduct research and test their writing among this target audience. Two books produced in the first and second writers' workshops won prizes in the All-India Competition of books for new literates run by the Ministry of Education. Training in the research techniques for interviewing and making questionnaires was added, and a Fulbright professor set up a course on the basic elements of journalism.

To keep writers interested the quarterly publication Lekhak (The Writer) now circulates to the some 200 writers who have studied at Literacy House. It advises them of openings and keeps them abreast of new developments in writing radio scripts, books and other materials for new literates and of news of Literacy House.

One of the busiest areas is the Communications Production Unit, added in 1961, with an artists studio, darkroom, silk screen printing and sound recording rooms, a puppet workshop, storeroom, and office. The Unit publishes not only the work of Literacy House but also of sister organizations. In addition to the primers and simple readers used in literacy classrooms are graded books for the village Tin Trunk Libraries. Regularly up-dated, there are now several hundreds of these Libraries at widely scattered locations. Visual aids, puppet plays, films and radio scripts are pretested before completion and release.

The newspaper Ujala, which became a weekly in September 1958, is now published in 5,000 copies. Passed from family to family in villages its readership greatly exceeds this figure. Paid subscribers have steadily increased and in 1962 a special issue alone sold over 29,000 copies. Puppet theater reaches untold others, posing problems that apply to all castes and creeds and daringly, but with good humor, exposing their prejudices.

Increasingly an international demonstration center, Literacy House has trained teachers from the Philippines, Sarawak and Iraq. A special course was organized in writing and preparing literacy materials for 11 trainees from Afghanistan and another for Tibetan refugee teachers. The Dalai Lama has appointed Mrs. FISHER as a member of his official committee on education to Tibetans in India. Earlier this year Mrs. FISHER visited Africa to discuss with leaders there the type of training needed which Literacy House could provide.

In 1958 Mrs. FISHER gave the reins of Literacy House to the Indian Executive Director. Now 84, the founder, main fund-raiser and general guiding spirit of Literacy House astonishes visitors with her vitality. With an erect bearing and vibrant voice she continues vigorously to participate, encouraging her colleagues to keep their vision broad and their sights high while doing each small job well. In her tidy bungalow, filled with souvenirs of decades in China and India, she is sometimes found typing at 4:30 a.m. because days and evenings are taken up by phone calls, staff conferences and visitors. Once every month she flies to New Delhi, to consult with Indian officials and others about programs and possibilities of aid. Her latest visit to the United States—for a lecture tour and to assist in fund-raising activities—was in 1963.

Queried as to her skill in soliciting funds and cooperation WELTHY FISHER’s answer is simple: "I believe deeply and sincerely in the work." She has secured assistance for Literacy House from the Indian Government, the Planning and Development Department of Uttar Pradesh, and Indian industrialists. Through CARE (Committee for American Remittances Everywhere), World Literacy of Canada and World Education, Inc. of the United States she has obtained contributions from unnumbered individuals in those two countries. The cultural unit of the U.S. State Department has helped finance expansion of the program and American foundation grants have paid for transport and maintenance of volunteers who are willing but could not come to Literacy House without this support.

Encouraged by the achievements of Literacy House and recently the recipient of US$1.7 million in rupees accumulated under the sale of U.S. Public Law 480 agricultural commodities, the India Literacy Board in 1964 has decided to assist in opening four more such institutions. Also a recipient of these grant funds, Mrs. FISHER has the ambitious plan of broadcasting literacy lessons to low cost receiving sets that would be distributed in villages all over India.

"Literacy," she explains with feeling, "is an idea whose time has come. Local, national and international programs—public and private—are hard at work on one of the most stubborn problems facing mankind—the development of an articulate and informed citizenry in a free society."

August 1964
Manila

REFERENCES:

Annual Reports. Lucknow, India: Literacy House, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, and 1963.

Complete Puppet Kit. A leaflet, Ibid. Undated.

"Eleventh Anniversary of Literacy House," National Herald. New York. February 14, 1964.

Fisher, Welthy M. To Light A Candle. London: Peter Davies, Ltd. 1963. (All quotations in this background statement on Mrs. Fisher's childhood up to the founding of Literacy House were taken from this book with Mrs. Fisher's permission.)

Grimes, Paul. "Literacy Village Near Lucknow Keeps Promise of Aid to Gandhi," New York Times. April 2, 1961.

Imprint. Bombay: F & S Distributors Private Ltd. Vol. 3, no. 7, October 1963.

Koshy, T. A. Five Year Plan - A Summary. Lucknow India: Literacy House. November 22, 1960

Lederer, William J: and Eugene Burdick. "Some Non-Ugly Americans," Life International. New York. March 14, 1960.

Lekhak. Lucknow, India: Literacy House, Vol. 2, no. 2, April 1962; Vol. 3, no. 3, 4, January 1964.

"Light for the Illiterate," Asia Magazine. Hong Kong. December 3, 1961.

Literacy House, The First Decade. Delhi: Publications Division, Indian Cooperative Union. 1963.

Messages Received on the 10th Anniversary of the Founding of Literacy House, Lucknow, India. February 15, 1963.

News Circle. Delhi: American Women's Club. Vol. 4, no. 9, May 1959.

Shah, M. A. Hyder. "The Literacy Village in Lucknow," The Asian Student. San Francisco: Asia Foundation. May 13, 1961.

Siddiqi, Abdur Rashid. An Approach to Educating Adults for Functional Literacy in India. A thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University for the Degree of Master of Science, September 1963.

Simple Visual Aids on Development Problems. Lucknow, India: Literacy House. Undated.

"Teaching People to Teach People To Read and Write," Yojana. India. February 19, 1961.

This is Literacy House. Lucknow, India: Literacy House. Undated.

Visit to Literacy House and its field work in the villages. Interviews with persons acquainted with Mrs. Fisher and her work.