GC Literacy Council seeks new volunteers, community partners

As The Literacy Council of Garland County looks to double its impact on those in need of literacy and mathematics teaching and remediation in the next year, it needs help from multiple segments of the community.

Council Executive Director Sarah Richardson, who began her position in July, told The Sentinel- Record in September that they hope to double the number of students and volunteers by September 2021. So far, they are halfway to their goal.

“We’re at about — this is not my favorite number — about 20 students, which is not anywhere near our best numbers ever, but is about where we were at, at a full-year cycle last year,” Richardson said. “Our numbers don’t look great, but the state numbers for literacy councils are down to about 20% of what they normally are at this point in the year.

“So I feel like at least we’re kind of keeping our ground, and we’re hoping to continue to grow some. That’s what we want for next year is really to get back to — I found documents from years past where we served 150 students. That’s really what we want to be back to. That’s what we want. We want to be making

we want. We want to be making a real impact again, and so we’re not there yet.”

Council Board President Kenyann Lucas said the highest peak she has seen at the council since she began volunteering in 2015 was the summer of 2017 when a bilingual couple recruited about 30 students whose first language wasn’t English.

“We had a lot of opportunities that summer that we didn’t have prior and haven’t had since. We had three AmeriCorps people that summer, and out of those three were … bilingual,” Lucas said. “During that summer they really did an enormous amount of outreach.”

A diverse group of volunteers would help to recruit a diverse set of students, she said.

Richardson said she hired an AmeriCorps member this month in hopes that will further assist with community outreach. The member will be added to the council’s existing group of eight to 10 volunteers.

As for volunteers, Richardson said while they are currently looking for tutors able to help students via Zoom, there are volunteer opportunities for projects around their building.

“All over the scope from construction to basic maintenance for sure,” she said. “So even just like handyman-type stuff. … I’m the only true staff member, so if someone calls me and offers their help I’m going to take it. And if they call me and say I would be really interested in helping you fundraise, I would say yes. If they’re interested in dusting the whole office, I would say yes. If you have a skill set or just an interest, we have a spot for you.”

In addition to adding volunteers, she said creating partnerships with nonprofits for services and businesses for sponsorships will also help the council grow. A few partnerships she has created with the council so far include Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, the Garland County Library and the GED program at National Park College.

“That’s just kind of where we’re headed, is a more partnership focused, and we want to head back to the heyday of really impacting a lot of people,” she said.

“There’s a few pieces to why what we’re doing is so important,” Richardson said. “Literacy is one of the number one factors in impacting so many parts of the rest of our community. Whether people vote and understand their legal rights is impacted by their literacy. Whether they are contributing to the economy of our area is a literacy factor. Whether they’re able to escape domestic violence is a contributing factor to their literacy.

“So anything we can do to build a more literate community in Garland County makes a better community in Garland County. And so another thing is that we don’t have a lot of overhead. Even those sponsorships we’re asking for, almost every penny goes to actually impacting an adult, and so it’s important not just for that one adult, but it impacts our whole community when that adult gets a better job, when that adult is able to read to their child, when that adult is able to better participate in parent conferences or at their doctor’s office visits.

“When people give to us, we’re building something to make an impact, yes, for that individual that’s going to help them reach their goals, but it’s going to help them reach their goals in everything from crime rates to poverty to the health of our community when people are more literate, and I think that’s why people may be interested in giving to our little organization.”

Richardson said with 11% of the county in need of literacy assistance, she is here to stay in her position and is “in love” with the council’s mission to help.

“Twenty (students) is fine, it’s not great, it’s not where I want to be,” she said. “I’m not going to pretend about that, but it’s … better than where we were at this point last year, and we definitely have the potential, especially once COVID is over.

“That’s my big thing right now, is I’m trying to put all these structures into place so that the minute we can relax a little with the measures for health safety, we can just run. Like, there’s no reason not to, to be able to just blow the doors off of it because there are people out there who need us, and there are people who want to be a part of what we’re doing.”