Literacy Month

Starting each fall, many literacy programs celebrate literacy days and months. UNESCO set September 8 as the International Literacy Day, and programs often host activities throughout the month. This is a good opportunity for your adult learners to tell their success stories.

October is Health Literacy Month and November is Family Literacy Month.

This can be an opportunity for libraries to promote their media, learning software and online health subscriptions. The Florida Electronic Library allows customers to down load articles to their mp3 player and also listen to the audio on their computer. This feature makes the information universally accessible to those who prefer to learn by listening including low level readers.

The Florida Literacy Coalition recently updated the booklet, Getting Started in Adult Literacy. It provides a good overview for those new to all aspects of adult literacy.

Student Persistence

The Florida Department of Education uses federal funds for taskforces who developed a variety of resources for adult education classrooms this year. One of the resources is a student persistence toolkit. Even though it is aimed at school programs, some of the material, concepts and stratagies should work with volunteer literacy programs. Take a look a the resources and let us know what you think would be most useful.

http://mail.live.com/default.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0

GED and the Role of the Library

Volunteer literacy programs often get learners who are there to, eventually, get their high school diploma. This is happening even more lately as people lose their jobs. Libraries are one of the places people go to get GED books.

This can be an opportuntiy for referrals. Make sure your librarian knows about your program. You may also want to provide them this list of tips that I just posted on ALA Connect . There is a link in my post to GED Fact Sheets which will also be useful for tutors and their learners who are interested in taking the GED.

This ALA Connect, community of interest, is a new site for anyone working on adult literacy in a library or for their literacy partners. You can see posts and can also become a member of the site. It is open to non ALA members and has a Committee on Literacy. (ALA stands for the American Library Association)
Post by Sandy Newell, President of VALF

Library Literacy

There is a new literacy community on the American Library Association social networking site called ALA Connect. Connect is similar to Facebook but it is dedicated to the library community. Members can set up "communities" which are also accessible to non-members.

This new community focuses on public library literacy best practices. It is the one place that the public library community can have conversations around library literacy programs.

A recent post includes the California State Library guidelines for literacy programs. If you are administering or volunteering in a library literacy program, go and add your comments and suggestions on library literacy program management.

VALF helped created library literacy tip sheets which are a good resource for library literacy programs. The one that has not been completed is "Why Library Literacy". We would love to hear more from you on why a library should be involved in adult literacy. Post your comments here and do join the library literacy community on ALA Connect.
Post by Sandy Newell, President VALF

New Address

Our VALF address:

Volunteers for Adult Literacy in Florida (VALF)
Literacy Florida! Inc.
P.O. Box 180396
Tallahassee, Florida 32318

Our email is valflorida@hotmail.com

Free Workshop on Program Management

Read the post on Evaluating Your Program to get more information about our VALF free workshop in September. Please register today.

More on Partnerships

One of the best way to develop partnerships to get support for your program is to get more involved in civic groups. For example, when I was starting up my first volunteer literacy program in Panama City, I also joined Altrusa. At that time it was the women's group -- which, to some degree, mirrored Rotary. Literacy is still one of their priorities.

Through my work with the group, we got financial support, tutors and tutor trainers. As you grow your collaborations, you will need to invest your time in other causes to help attract support to your program. One of the roles of volunteer literacy board members to reach out to other groups, to raise the awareness of adult literacy and the work of your own organization.

Please comment about your partnership experiences.

Sandy Newell,
VALF President