Based on a survey, there are still 10 penitentiary inmates who are illiterate in Gorontalo City Penitentiary, with age 45-65 years old. The survey shows that penitentiary inmates who committed a crime, are included those who are illiterate. This means that basically, these people have character issues. Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop functional literacy learning model based on character education by the learning centre in Pengayoman. The method used in this research is research and development, divided into four steps: initial study, developing model, implementation, and recommended model construction. Furthermore, the experimental method used an empirical test. The model design product consists of recommended learning model design for illiteracy learning based on character education. Furthermore, from this model, it is expected to improve personal character, entrepreneur character, and cognition and psychomotor.