VALF Grant Application Due February 28

For the VALF grant applications email valflorida@hotmail.com.

Free Webinar on Health Literacy Feb 4

VALF Webinar on February 4, Friday   1 p.m. ET
Fostering Health Literacy: Partnerships Webinar: Libraries, Volunteer Literacy Programs and the Medical Community

Register today for this free webinar.

Here is the url for the session.  To register, send your name, organization, email address and phone to valflorida@hotmail.com

You will need a computer and ear phones.  A microphone would be useful to talk but is not necessary

More about the session:Library staff and volunteer literacy practitioners will learn how low literacy impacts health and explore how to design services to foster health literacy.  Topics include: adult literacy statistics, information literacy, learning styles, health information resources; partnership opportunities between libraries, adult literacy programs and the medical community and more.  Learn more to help you prepare for a grant opportunity listed below. 

This free webinar session, provided by Volunteers for Adult Literacy in Florida (VALF), will be presented by Sandy Newell, President of VALF and Lana Brand, library information professional.

Sandy Newell, past Chair of the American Library Association (ALA) Committee on Literacy, has years of experience in adult and family literacy.  She started and managed volunteer literacy programs in public libraries and has provided adult literacy training and technical assistance for programs in Florida, Georgia, and across the country. She has spoken at Florida and national literacy and library conferences on health literacy, volunteer literacy and library literacy.  She has held leadership roles including serving on the Florida Department of Education family literacy practitioners task force and the Public Library Association’s Advancement of Literacy Award Committee and is currently President of VALF which provides training, technical assistance and grants for volunteer literacy programs..

Lana Brand, a professional librarian, is in her final semester of the University of South Florida's (USF) library and information science master's degree program, where she has focused her studies on library instruction and information literacy. While earning her graduate degree, she has been a reference intern at USF's Shimberg Health Sciences Library and a USF School of Information graduate assistant researching consumer health information seeking behavior. Her bachelor's degree is from the University of Florida in English with an emphasis in Advanced Writing and a minor in education, which she used to teach English literature and reading in a Florida public high school for several years until deciding to move to Latin America for a couple of years to improve her Spanish language skills. There she taught English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to Spanish speakers and trained future EFL teachers in month-long intensive courses. She plans to combine her background in education and cross-cultural communication to address consumer health information issues here and around the globe.