Literacy:
Spanning the U.S.
The Literacy Center gets
new logo and slogan
Courier Press: 6.06.2015 by Megan Erbacher
It’s not easy to ask for
help.
And individuals that
struggle with reading may not know where to turn, said The Literacy Center
Executive Director Jennifer Wigginton.
In an attempt to
broaden awareness of the services offered at the nonproft [sic] that works to improve
basic adult literacy in the community, The Literacy Center announced a new logo
and slogan last week.
The rebranding effort
includes the slogan “Read for Life.” And the logo is a circle of everyday
items, including a light bulb, a key, a clock, a book and an envelope,
surrounding the words “The Literacy Center.”
Literacy is the key
component to multiple essential life skills, Wigginton said. Those skills
include helping people manage their lives and do everything from building
relationships to daily communication skills, as well as financial, health and
digital literacy.
“The slogan is about
trying to make that individual comfortable with understanding that reading is a
part of life,” she said. “And if it’s hard for you, if you struggle with it,
then come to The Literacy Center.”
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“We wanted a brand that
not only made us more colorful and lively and modern, but also more of a good
feel approach,” Wigginton said. “Something that also represents just the fact
that whenever it comes to the average day, we read thousands of words and we
don’t even realize it ... Most individuals that read just fine take it for
granted.”
The rebranding project
is a result of a grant The Literacy Center received through Evansville Design Group’s Design for Good
program. Each year, Evansville Design Group selects a local nonprofit
organization to assist in marketing needs.
READ MORE !
Waterville
literacy program picks up where others left off
Central Maine: 6.07.2015 by Amy Calder
Ezra Randall Jr. sat
across the table from his tutor, Tom McGuire, pondering the answer to a
question about how he happened to drop out of high school some 25 years ago.
“I walked in one door
and walked out the other because I was constantly getting picked on and bullied
and beaten on,” said Randall, now 41. “I got detention and stuff. I basically
told the principal I was done.”
I met Randall at Literacy Volunteers Waterville’s annual
celebration Tuesday afternoon at Waterville
Public Library where about 30 board members, tutors, students
and their family and friends shared stories and refreshments.
Randall, a tall, lanky,
bespectacled man who looks like a young Alan Alda, said he is earning a high
school diploma at Mid-Maine Regional Adult Community Education and expects to
graduate next year at this time.
He has been working
with McGuire, a literacy volunteer, about a year and a half.
“My Catholic Charities
worker told me about Literacy Volunteers, and I didn’t know anything about it
until she told me,” he said.
McGuire, 68, meets
Randall every Thursday afternoon at the library, which is a convenient
location, as Randall lives just across the street. They read, work on
organizational skills, and McGuire helped him enroll in adult education. When
Randall started in Literacy Volunteers, he was reading at an upper fourth-grade
level and now is doing much better, according to McGuire. READ MORE !
At the
Bay Area Book Festival recently a panel of adult learners shared their journey
of reading a book that impacted their lives. Michael, an adult learner, was
inspired for the first time by a book: “It’s never too late to learn… that’s
what I learned from this book. All people who are scared to read need to give
themselves a chance.” Many thanks to the Berkeley
Public Library for this!
The Struggle for Literacy, the Need for Booze, the Bay Area Book Festival
I would buy no books.
As the Bay Area Rapid Transit escalator carried me upward, toward the
first annual Bay Area Book
Festival (6th and 7th, June), I repeated my new mantra. I would buy no books.
I would wander the streets lined with booksellers and listen to author
panels.I would eavesdrop in ladies’ rooms and eat mediocre street truck fare. I
would see An Evening With Judy Blume.
But I would buy no books. Our small
home is awash in books, any semblance of order long forgotten. The bookshelves
need bookshelves.
Steeling myself, I began walking.
Five city streets were given over to booksellers and publishers, who were
grouped by topic: Literary Lane, Radical Row, Writer’s Row, Eco Alley, and Mind
and Body Blvd. At Civic Center Park, the
Lacuna, a circular installation of 50,000 free books, gradually came down as
people made their selections.
The Festival offered free author panels and readings in venues around the
city. As the San Francisco Bay Area is filled with writers, the difficulty lay
in narrowing down who to see. Too often wonderful writers were scheduled
simultaneously, forcing tough decisions. Michelle Tea or Maxine Hong Kingston?
Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon or Jane Hirschfield? This speaks not to poor
scheduling, but the wealth of Bay Area talent.
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Next, the Bay Area Literacy Panel. There, six adults described the
hurdles each had only recently overcome to attain literacy. An East African
woman held up a biography of Michael Jackson. Like the singer, she had abusive
father who interfered with her education. Her voice breaking, she described
being beaten, forced to work, and running away from home—at age seven. Now a
mother herself, she told the audience her children’s lives would be better than
hers. “I put them in school. I make them play.”
READ MORE !
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