[AAACE-NLA]Reaching the Unreached

[AndresMuro@aol.com]

Tom, et al:

I was just thinking that since I have a lot of knowledge in literacy, I could 
do some volunteer work to address the need that you are discussing....
No wait....

I'm sorry, after thinking about this for a second, I realized that I have to 
work for a living, so I will not be able to volunteer after all. I am terribly 
sorry for this...but,  hey! I have and idea. Maybe, the leaders of WorldCom, 
or enron, who made out with a ton of $$$$, and of haliburton, who got 
multimillion non-bid government contracts (and their families) could devote some of 
the free time in their hands to do some volunteer work and help literacy world 
wide. 

I am sure they could follow the lead of their friend and past president, past 
VP, past oil man, and past CIA director. While he got giga rich (enough money 
to leave no child or adult or elderly behind), his wife did some literacy 
campaigning and made us all feel really good.   

Now that the US government passed a really juicy tax cut, some of the 
beneficiaries may feel compelled to drive their Mercedez to the projects and spend 
some time doing some volunteer tutoring. Yeahh!!!!

Andres


In a message dated 5/29/2003 10:01:53 PM Mountain Daylight Time, 
tsticht at znet.com writes:

> Reaching the Unreached           May 29, 2003
> Tom Sticht
> 
> ProLiteracy Worldwide has embarked upon an advocacy campaign to recruit
> 100,000 literacy volunteers. According to ProLiteracy's April 10, 2003
> news release about this campaign, "One in four adults in the United States
> struggles with low literacy. One of the biggest hurdles in overcoming this
> problem is the lack of volunteer tutors. ProLiteracy
> Worldwide, the world’s oldest and largest adult literacy organization, is
> launching a national campaign to recruit 100,000 new volunteers."
> 
> There are close to 200,000,000 million adults over the age of 16 in the
> U.S. If  ProLiteracy's estimate that 25 percent of adults struggle with
> low literacy and that this is a national problem, it means that around
> 50,000,000 adults are in need of some sort of literacy services.
> 
> The ProLiteracy news release goes on to quote Robert Wedgeworth, president
> of ProLiteracy Worldwide as saying, "The number of low-literate adults in
> this country continues to grow as does the need for
> English-as-a-Second-Language instruction. With 100,000 new literacy
> volunteers, our volunteer adult literacy organizations can better meet the
> increasing need within their communities and positively affect more
> lives."
> 
> Wedgeworth continues, "Adult literacy-specifically low literacy-is
> embedded in every social issue faced in this country and abroad. Ensuring
> that adults have access to quality literacy services in their communities
> is key to decreasing health and welfare costs, improving children’s school
> performance, boosting workplace productivity and lessening prison
> recidivism."
> 
> But to meet the needs of 50,000,000 adults, each of the new volunteers
> will have to tutor 500 adults. And first they will have to attract the
> adults to the ProLiteracy programs. And if the number of adults with
> literacy problems is actually growing, as Wedgeworth says, then all this
> suggests that the adult literacy problem as identified by ProLiteracy will
> be with us for a long while.
> 
> Now the question is, is this strategy for advocating for helping adult
> literacy education actually well formulated? Has the scale of need been
> validly stated? Are there really 50,000,000 adults with literacy problems
> so severe they need access to volunteer literacy tutors? Can 50,000,000
> adults be reached by ProLiteracy programs in any reasonable amount of time
> with any reasonable number of tutors? Is advocating for 100,000 volunteers
> the best way for " Ensuring that adults have access to quality literacy
> services in their communities?"
> 
> If the need for adult literacy education is as severe as ProLiteracy has
> stated, and indeed the U. S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational
> and Adult Education says that some 90,000,000 million adults are suffering
> from inadequate literacy skills, then why hasn't the present
> administration asked for any increases in the budget for adult literacy
> education in the last three budgets? And why hasn't the Congress made
> significant increases in the budget for adult literacy education? Is it
> because they believe the problem can be solved for free, by volunteers? Or
> is it perhaps that they don't really believe the problem is as serious as
> their rhetoric suggests?
> 
> Further, if the problem is as severe as it seems to be to those engaged in
> adult literacy education or policy making, then why don't more adults
> recognize they have a problem and present themselves for services, thereby
> flooding the states with demands for education? Is it because 93 percent
> of adults think they don't have literacy problems, as the NALS data on
> self-perceived literacy abilities indicated?
> 
> All this suggest to me that there is a need for an overarching strategy
> for advocating for adult literacy education at the national, state and
> local levels, into which the ProLiteracy activity, the National Coalition
> for Literacy Action Agenda, local needs, state plans, and the federal
> government activities could be integrated.
> 
> We need to have a strategy and we need the resources to permit adult
> literacy educators to reach the unreached.

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