Adult Education and Family Literacy Week 2020

Adult Education and Family Literacy Week is here!!

September 20-26, 2020 is National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week! The whole week is devoted to spreading awareness about adult education opportunities and resources for families to help them learn together as a whole. The Literacy Cooperative invites you to join us to spread awareness about the great opportunities available to adults and families in Cuyahoga County!

Our goal is to create enough momentum around #AEFLWeek, #AdultEd, and our own #AdultsLearnCLE and #FamiliesLearnCLE hashtags that adult and whole family education will become a hot topic all over Northeast Ohio!  To get involved, click here.

The Literacy Cooperative is an umbrella organization that brings foundations, organizations, and people together to find practical solutions to improve literacy. We are mobilizing Northeast Ohio resources to increase reading, math, and digital literacy, beginning at birth, so our kids are performing at grade level throughout their educational journey. Our support, coordination, and facilitation of adult literacy initiatives are creating pathways that lead to rewarding and life-sustaining careers. We are sharing our research and introducing best practices and pilots that are innovative, interactive, and effective. The Literacy Cooperative provides oversight and overall strategic coordination currently not being fulfilled by individual providers.

Why is this work so important?  An assessment of the state of literacy in Cuyahoga County done by The Literacy Cooperative found:

  • 42% of all children enrolling in kindergarten are not adequately prepared to succeed
  • 10% of all adults do not have a high school diploma
  • Nearly 40% of those without a high school diploma are ages 18-44

The Literacy Cooperative and its partners are working with programs such as Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a monthly book-gifting initiative that mails books to young children from birth to age five, and Aspire for adults, the state of Ohio’s adult education programs. Efforts such as contextualized curriculum that blend academics and job-related skills are becoming increasingly effective.

Most promising of all are new two-generational (2Gen) projects and programs, involving both children and adults in a family, that are being developed by a 2Gen committee, led by The Literacy Cooperative, of more than 20 educational and human service agencies. Most significantly, the committee has issued 2Gen Cuyahoga: A Community Call to Action to Address Our Economic and Social Gaps on how this collaboration will work to improve social inequities on a whole family basis.

How to get free books for your child

From News 5 Cleveland:

CLEVELAND — Every summer, the Scripps Howard Foundation and our News 5 family come together to donate money and buy books for children in need here in Cleveland.

This year, we’re also asking our viewers to join us in supporting our “Give A Child A Book” campaign.

The foundation will match every dollar donated, up to $5,000.

The words we learn as children shape so much of the rest of our lives.

“We know talking to your child from the moment they’re born is good for their brain,” said Bob Paponetti, president and CEO of The Literacy Cooperative.

The Literacy Cooperative is a nonprofit in Northeast Ohio that connects organizations and people to improve literacy right where we live. Full disclosure, Homa Bash is a board member of the organization.

Read more from News 5 Reporter Homa Bash by clicking HERE.

The Economic Case for Literacy

Low literacy is costly to individuals, employers, and societies. The COVID-19 crisis introduced many to the level of disruptions that are experienced by low-literate families daily. According to Anne Mosle, Executive Director – Ascend at the Aspen Institute, half of the hourly workers in the U.S. do not get enough notice to adequately coordinate school, childcare and taking care of a loved one. She eloquently states, “Uncertainty is the damaging byproduct of poverty.”  It is also the byproduct of low literacy! It means higher hurdles and lower wealth for this generation of Cuyahoga County residents and generations to come, unless we sponsor and support powerful interventions to halt what has become an intergenerational problem in far too many places in this county. A highly literate population, on the other hand, will contribute to the economic growth of Cuyahoga County and regional prosperity by placing more parents and caregivers within reach of family-sustaining jobs. Perhaps, most importantly, such a population will help energize Cuyahoga County’s most important asset, human capital.

Read more

Get Out The Vote – 8/28/2020

Read more

Teaching in a Virtual Environment: 8/14/2020

Read more