New fund bolsters adult literacy program at Sonora library
The Tuolumne County Adult Literacy Program received a large donation from the family of Patricia Garside, a longtime supporter of the program and former Sonora resident, creating a standing fund which will be controlled exclusively by program staff, rather than county or state departments.
Named the ‘ Garside Family Adult Literacy Fund’, the endowment will subsidize the Adult Literacy Program, which is available at library branches across Tuolumne County.
In addition to the fund, the library is dedicating the space to Garside, which will now be known as the Patricia Garside Adult Learning Literacy Center. On Friday, family and friends gathered at the Sonora branch of the Tuolumne County library for a dedication ceremony.
The new fund was made possible by a donation from Keitaro Matsuda, 66, of Oakland. Matsuda first came to the United States in 1972 as an American Field Service exchange student and spent a year with the Garsides.
Matsuda worked alongside Lynn Mccormick, the former youth, literacy and outreach librarian at the library, as well as Darrell Slocum, the CEO of the Sonora Area Foundation.
“Fifty years ago, I came to this country as an exchange student,” Matsuda said. “The family really helped me acquire the language and get acclimated to American society. Since then, I’ve been blessed to have two worlds inside me.”
According to Matsuda, the idea of the fund came from a combination of the family’s interest in micro-loans, as well as looking to make a difference in the community. They had to look no further
than the work Garside has done over the past twenty years in Sonora.
“We said, ‘This community needs this resource. How can we do this in a locally focused way?’ We didn’t want to just give to the state or the whole library system,” Matsuda said.
“We took inspiration from the success of microloans and micro-banking in emerging economies to create a program that was driven by and served local needs and not one dependent on state or county budgets and politics,” Matsuda told the Union Democrat in a statement.
Adult literacy hits home for Matsuda, who improved his English greatly while staying with the Garsides on his exchange visit to the US. According to Matsuda, this program provides much more than a language, it opens up opportunities.
“The skills you need nowadays to earn a basic living have changed so much. It’s not just the language, not just getting accustomed to the customs,” Matsuda said. “We quickly learned that the adult literacy program was not just the language, not just being able to read — it was giving people life skills.
According to Mccormick, who served as youth, literacy and outreach librarian before retiring April 19 of this year, Garside was a mentor to her throughout her career, as well as a strong supporter of the library’s literacy programs.
“She has been so instrumental, in my book, for the program and its success,” Mccormick said. “She’s just always been there.”
Garside, who moved to Tuolumne County from Southern California in 1984, was immediately attracted to the library when she moved to the area and established herself as a fixture in the Tuolumne library system.
“I was very comfortable being with people, working with people. And I like people,” Garside said. “It just all came floating together, like it was meant to be.”
This program, which has been running since 1996 according to Mccormick, has long been supported by Garside in particular. McCormick said Garside was one of the first certified tutors in the program.
Garside said she was shocked by the outpouring of support at the dedication ceremony to the Adult Literacy Center.
“It can’t be real. I must be dreaming,” Garside said. “Am I going to wake up tomorrow and find out it’s [not] really happening? I can’t believe all these people would come.”
For some, the issue of adult literacy might not stand out. But, according to Garside, the effects of low literacy among adults can have very real consequences. One of her earliest students, Garside said, struggled to read labels on the products and would fear she would accidentally give her children something dangerous.
“She couldn’t read, so she did it by looking at the pictures and deciding what it was,” Garside said. She’s doing well, and she always reminds me, ‘You saved my life,’” Garside said.
According to Mccormick, this program is unique in that it doesn’t follow a standardized curriculum, instead opting to help students learn how to read about what they find to be most important in their lives.
“You’re really focusing in on what that adult truly needs, and that makes a big difference,” Mccormick said. “You are actually going in and saying, ‘I need to be able to take my child to the doctor. How do I do that?’
According to Mccormick, improving literacy as an adult can be particularly difficult because of the responsibilities adults face in daily life, which can get in the way of normally-scheduled tutoring. It is for that reason that the adult literacy program is accessible through any branch of the Tuolumne County library.
“There’s a flexibility, not only in the time frame, but also the location. The idea is to try and remove as many barriers as possible to the adult who needs the help,” Mccormick said.
One of the first changes to the Sonora branch as a result of the new funding will be the hire of Literacy Coordinator Haley Tallent. Tallent, who holds a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a master’s degree in Library Science, will join the library staff and take over management of the Adult Literacy Program.
The announcement of this fund comes after a period of instability regarding the future of the Sonora branch. Before reopening its doors Nov. 2, 2020 in the wake of a long pandemic closure, the Sonora branch of the library was the focus of deep county budget cuts which nearly halved the library’s staff from 9.5 full time employees to 5.5.
According to Mccormick, the program applies for a grant from the state which helps pay for the most basic aspects of the program, including base funding as well as an additional percapita amount. The Garside Family Adult Literacy Fund will help support the program in ways which the state money cannot, McCormick said.
“You want to make sure that you’re doing things that remove barriers from people wanting to participate. Having this special fund kind of frees [that] up,” Mccormick said. “With the state funding, there are ways you can use it and ways you can’t, so this helps with the ways that you can’t use the money and adds to it.”
When asked how long the fund might extend the program’s funding, Matsuda said he hopes it will help bolster the program for years to come.
“That really depends on how quickly the fund will be dispersed or utilized, and that really depends on the needs the library has. We don’t quite know how long, but it’s set up in a way that it should work for years and years,” Matsuda said.