"I'm unemployed and want to get back into the workforce and I want more basic skills just of the things we need in life." The literacy program is being run in Sydney for the first time from Monday by the Literacy for Life Foundation, which brought the international community-based model for language and numeracy teaching to Australia in 2012. Under the model, classes of up to 20 students learn basic literacy foundations, including learning the alphabet and writing sentences and paragraphs, for three months and then spend another three months learning life skills that involve literacy and numeracy such as first-aid and filling out forms. The program, which has been completed by people ranging in age from 16 to over 50, has had high success rates in NSW communities such as Enngonia, Wilcannia, Bourke and Walgett, where up to 70 per cent of Aboriginal adults have low literacy. "Once you learn to read and write, it opens up a whole plethora of things," the foundation's executive director Jack Beetson said.

"People becoming literate at a basic level can get a driver's licence for the first time in their life. In places like Bourke, magistrates will tell you that 80 per cent of the people who attend court are there because of driving offences. "Most of our graduates are also long-term unemployed because it's extremely difficult to get work when you have low literacy. The biggest employer of Aboriginal men is the construction industry, and to work in that you have to do a course and get a white card, all of which require literacy and numeracy skills." Mr Beetson said many graduates of the program have gone on to do TAFE courses and get jobs in the communities they grew up in. He said that increasing adult literacy also improves outcomes for children. "The greatest gift that we as Australia can possibly give Aboriginal children is literate parents because if you have literate parents you're much more likely to have higher rates of literacy," he said.

The Literacy for Life model's success in Australia and other countries has been attributed to the role of the wider community in the program, including employing people from the community as program facilitators who are helped by experts from Cuba, where the model was designed. Kay Bussell, an Aboriginal woman who will be co-facilitating the program in Campbelltown, said she has been happy to see a lot of people she knows signing up for the course. "We have youth right out of school, they have to be above 16, all the way up to elders who are interested in reading stories to their grandkids because a lot of the younger generation are now wanting to know grandma's or mum's history," Ms Bussell said.