Literacy:
Spanning the U.S.
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Help Others Learn To
Read In 2016
WFMY News: 1.05.2016 by Lauren Melvin
Here at WFMY News 2, we
know just how important it is to read. That's why we travel to a different
school each week bringing our Read 2 Succeed campaign to kids.
But there are adults
in our community who need help too and that's where you come in.
Reading
Connections is looking for committed volunteers who are
interested in tutoring English language learners in our community.
Reading Connections is
an adult literacy agency that provides free and confidential services that help
to improve basic literacy skills, self-esteem, community service and leadership
skills among new adult readers who live or work in Guilford County.
Tutors work with one or
more students two hours a week for at least one year. Knowing another language
is not required.
In Guilford County,
more than 20,000 adults aged 18-25 (approximately 10%) have less than a Grade 9
education. More than 40,000 adults are without a high school diploma, according
to the 1990 Census and Guilford County Schools.
VIDEO
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Teaching fellow focuses on city’s literacy problem
Tulane New Wave: 1.04.2016 by Hannah Dean
Megan Holt will be busy
teaching three classes of first-year composition at Tulane University starting
on Jan. 11, but she always finds time to work in the community for an important
cause: literacy.
A postdoctoral teaching
fellow in the English
Department,
she believes that literacy skills help lower crime and poverty rates — in
short, that the ability to read changes lives.
“Literacy has the power
to combat seemingly insurmountable social problems,” she says.
Since moving to New
Orleans in 2003, Holt has become involved in the Young Leadership Council’s One Book One
New Orleans,
the Literacy Alliance of Greater New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward Street
Library.
One Book One New
Orleans “aims to foster a greater sense of community through shared reading
experiences” by picking one book every fall and distributing free copies across
the city. The organization makes a concerted effort to include everyone — local
radio station WRBH-FM, which is for the blind and visually impaired, broadcasts
an audio version of the book. Volunteers send copies to incarcerated New
Orleanians outside the city and organizations like the Literary Alliance
include it in their adult GED and ESL classes.
Holt’s work as a
volunteer for OBONO not only helped earn the organization the honor of YLC
Project of the Year, but also led her to her work on the board of the Literary Alliance.
The alliance focuses on
literacy for all, which is particularly important in a city where 30 percent of
adults read at a 5th grade level or below. READ MORE@
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| @LiteracyWI |
The State Of Adult Literacy In Wisconsin
Wisconsin Public Radio: 12.30.2015
It’s estimated that approximately one million
Wisconsin adults quality for adult literacy and English language services, but
few are actually receiving them. Joy’s
guest assesses the state of adult literacy in Wisconsin, and what’s being done
to bring services to those in need of them.
Host(s): Joy Cardin Guest(s): Ezi Adesi LISTEN
Literacy Services of Wisconsin got its start in
Wauwatosa
Wauwatosa Now: 1.05.2016 by Abby Nitta
Literary
Services of Wisconsin celebrated its 50th year of providing
reading classes to undereducated and English as a Second Language students —
and it all began at First
Congregational Church of Wauwatosa.
Longtime church member Gordon Ralph first heard the world-famous Dr. Frank Laubach speak about the need for literacy at a Baptist assembly
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| @LiteracyGB |
When Laubach asked who would start a local chapter of literacy services in Wisconsin, Ralph stepped forward.
He first looked for volunteers within First Congregational.
"I made 34 phone calls and 32 said 'yes' — all were from the church," Ralph said.
After raising funds to send one of their volunteers to Baltimore to receive training, the group held their first meeting at Christ Presbyterian Church on 20th and Walnut Streets in Milwaukee. The group's initial focus was to teach reading and writing to illiterate adults in the city.
A "little miracle" happened at that first meeting, Ralph said, when one of their volunteers decided to take the literacy workshop and adapt it for use in teaching English as a second language.
By the end of 1965, members of the group had held 20 to 30 similar workshops, training tutors in 20 counties in Wisconsin.
"It's people helping people, and that's what I love — it's a very loving, caring, sharing thing, and heaven knows the world needs that," Ralph said.
Ralph also accompanied Laubach for three weeks to Kenya in 1965 to launch the "Kenya National Literacy Campaign" in partnership with the Kenyan Literacy Center and the Kenyan government.
Now 84 years old, Ralph lives in a retirement community in Florida with his wife, Jacquie. READ MORE @
Adult Literacy Month in Arkansas
Arkansas Matters: 1.06.2016
January has been proclaimed as Adult Literacy Month in Arkansas by Governor Asa Hutchinson.
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The Literacy Action of Central Arkansas says in a news release issued Tuesday that the action is critical in order to raise awareness about this often overlooked or hidden crises in our state. Low literacy skills in adults are a major contributor to poverty. It is also the number one factor in determining childhood literacy rates.
The group says that in the Central Arkansas area, more than 145,000 adults read at or below basic levels. Most do not have the reading skills necessary to succeed in the workplace; address their health care needs; read to their children; help with homework; talk to their teachers or read schedules, labels or billboards. Children in families with incomes below the poverty line are less likely to be read to aloud everyday than are children in families with incomes at or above the poverty line. READ MORE @
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