In order not to waste the time of the people working hard and sacrificing to become literate, literacy must offer them a real opportunity to change their life situation. Although many literacy programs are designed to fit the everyday lives and situations of their students, the same is not true for programs that teach arithmetic. Most adults accumulate a considerable store of knowledge and mental techniques to ensure their survival and development, even if that knowledge is not preserved and transmitted by writing. Illiterate people generally have a good knowledge of oral counting, of its mathematical structure, and a certain art of mental arithmetic that is adequate for meeting the needs of their traditional everyday life. Without paper and pencil they can carry out fairly difficult arithmetical operations. The methods used for teaching adults arithmetic should not be those used with young children. Rather, it is a matter of transforming the principal needs felt by the adults into specific educational methods and contents quickly and by going directly to the most essential and useful matters. The tasks of the team responsible for tailoring an arithmetic program to meet a specific case are: (1) to translate acknowledged needs into relevant educational goals; and (2) to define a coherent and effective system of advancement through those goals. (CML)