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Literacy: Spanning North America     

@RCLiteracy

What Prompted Me To Join The Rowan County Literacy Council

Salisbury Post: 8.19.2018 by Peggy Barnhardt

While working as a bank teller, needless to say, I came into contact with people from all walks of life. Two come to mind presently.

Although the actual encounters have long passed and their names have escaped my memory, the situation was impactive. Neither man could read or write. This is what prompted me to join the Rowan County Literacy Council, where I received tutor training in the Laubach Basics.

Before, it had never occurred to me that in this day and age there were still persons with little access to educational opportunity who were holding down jobs and concealing their inability to read.

I first became aware when a gentleman customer began coming to my station weekly to cash his check. He would perfunctorily place his mark in the designated space — X marked the spot — X was his mark.

Usually his wife would sign her name under his mark. One day, for whatever reason, her signature was missing, and since an X is non-descriptive and easily reproduced, a witnessed approval had to be obtained — legally necessary, but frustrating all the same.

Of course by now I knew his face, his race, his occupation and his always pleasant smile. =So I made him the offer — the opportunity to learn to write his name. It took only a couple of lessons on his weekly visits. Voila! A beautiful signature emerged like a moth from a cocoon, and happy campers witnessed it — he, his wife and I.  READ MORE >>

@LiteracyAction

Book Lover Turned Literacy Advocate Looks To Change Lives ‘One Word At A Time’

CS Monitor: 8.21.2018 by David Karas

Coping mechanisms can hide adult illiteracy – a problem linked to higher poverty and health-care costs. But even after cuts in government funding, one literacy nonprofit in Arkansas, led by Sara Drew, has grown.

Christina Cook wants to be a respiratory therapist and hopes she and her husband can one day own a home and several acres of land – and she isn’t letting the low grades she got in school hold her back.

Ms. Cook, age 40, hasn’t been in school for some time, but she has been hitting the books and receives regular tutoring thanks to Literacy Action of Central Arkansas.

“I am trying to get my associate degree, my bachelor’s degree, and my master’s degree,” says the resident of North Little Rock, Ark. As a respiratory therapist, “I will be able to help people, and [we will] be able to live in a house of our own.”

Based on the fifth floor of a library in Arkansas’s capital, Little Rock, Literacy Action was founded in 1986 to organize volunteer tutors who could teach reading and English language skills. The organization serves seven counties in central Arkansas and works with 850 clients a year, delivering more than 11,000 hours of instruction.

Sara Drew has been Literacy Action’s executive director since 2014. On a recent morning in the organization’s headquarters, she reflected on the profound effect of literacy on both herself and those her nonprofit supports. The banner on the wall behind her, “Changing Lives – one word at a time,” perhaps says it all.  READ MORE >>

@NelsonPLibrary

A Year Of Stories And Food At The New to Nelson Potlucks

Melody Rae Storey on the library’s special gatherings for newcomers

Nelson Star: 8.21.2018 by Melody Rae Storey, Teen & Literacy Coord-Nelson Library

When I moved back to my hometown five years ago, a wise friend gave me some sage advice: where there are endings, look for joy, and where there are beginnings, wait patiently.

Patient indeed – it took more than a few years of Nelson living before I felt like I had a group of friends and connections in the community. It is hard being new to town and we all know the feeling, right? At the same time, the Canadian government was making efforts to settle and integrate 3,600 Syrian refugees and they were slowly starting to trickle into the interior. UBC researchers came out with a study showing that rural immigrants often struggle with feeling connected to their adopted communities.

Meanwhile, the Nelson Public Library was writing a new strategic plan and one of their key focus areas was fostering space for the community to connect. All these things came together to provide the impetus for hosting a monthly multicultural potluck at the library as part of my job as the Literacy Coordinator.

I tried to find other libraries that were doing something similar so that I could copy, paste and steal (as librarians do) their successes and avoid their mistakes.  READ MORE >>

@indyreads

Managed Health Services (MHS) Partners with Indy Reads, Circulation and Lyft to Promote Literacy for Members

Markets Business Insider: 8.22.2018

Managed Health Services (MHS) is partnering with Indy Reads, a nonprofit that offers literacy training and education, Circulation and Lyft to support members with low literacy and encourage them to take literacy classroom training.

One in six adults in Indiana reads below the fifth-grade reading level, and more than 49,000 adults in Marion County struggle to read and write.

"Indy Reads provides literacy education to adults who have trouble reading and writing," said Indy Reads Chief Executive Officer Ryan King. "Reading is the gateway to finding new or better employment, to providing a better life for your family, and to having independence overall. Everyone deserves to have the skills to read a newspaper, complete a job application or read to their kids at bedtime."

Indy Reads programs are completely free for students, and instructors and tutors focus on each student's specific needs. Starting next year, some HIP members will be required to work, go to school, volunteer or participate in other qualifying Gateway to Work activities up to 20 hours a week for at least eight months a year. These Indy Reads classes will count towards the new Gateway to Work requirements.

MHS is helping to ensure members registered in Indy Reads' classes are participating and remaining engaged by providing enhanced transportation benefits through Circulation and Lyft.

"MHS is committed to delivering on its purpose of transforming the health of the community, one person at a time," said MHS CEO Kevin O'Toole. "Supporting our members' pursuit of literacy is an important part of treating the whole person, and we are pleased to partner with Indy Reads on this initiative.  READ MORE >>