Please take a moment to share our joy!

A "graduation" surprise party at a local park

Al is a sweet and hard-working student who enrolled in the AL program in late 2019 to study for his GED. Despite having mental health challenges, he has been able to juggle multiple obligations while working with us: attending classes in A-B Tech’s Transitional Studies program, working a part-time job, studying for the Language Arts portion of the GED, working closely with his peer support team, and learning to live as part of a larger community at his group home. 

Al’s group home went on lockdown in the spring of 2020, but he really wanted to keep studying. So we made an arrangement to keep him on track: Rebecca delivered worksheets to his group home mailbox and every week brought more. Al probably completed about 100 pages of grammar, spelling, and mechanics exercises. When the Literacy Council was ready to being online sessions and he was matched with a new tutor, he was more confident and focused and moved quickly through the textbook.  He has now moved up to the next literacy level and is working with a second tutor to prepare for the math GED test!

Al’s mental health challenges make it difficult for him to communicate about and understand abstract concepts, so seeing concrete indicators of his progress -- finishing worksheets, completing more chapters in his text, scoring higher on his test, taking on a second GED subject -- are points of great pride. 

Last week his peer support team threw him a surprise party at a local park. Because he has demonstrated growth, independence, and responsibility on so many levels, Al was able to “graduate” from his intensive peer support program. He was delighted. It was an emotional moment for all of us to help him celebrate his achievements: to be more self-sufficient; to be trusted and respected; to be loved and appreciated; and to know that all his hard work has been worth it. 

ESOL: We have been able to increase the types of services we offer our students

As you may know, our new Outreach Director, Laura Bernhein, is also spending a few hours each week assisting Erin in the ESOL program. As a result of the added staff time, we have been able to increase the types of services we offer our students.

Ahead of the anticipated fee increase for naturalization applications, we helped several students and some of their family members fill out and submit their application forms. Laura also conferred with a schoolteacher alongside an LCBC student whose young daughter was having trouble getting connected with her online classroom, and helped another LCBC student navigate a hospital billing system in order to get control of her bills.

We're excited to grow the capacity of our program to continue fulfilling our primary mission - language teaching for personal empowerment - and also help to meet some of our students' additional language-related needs.

This year, as we do every election year, we compiled information about voting and voter registration and sent it out to tutors to pass on and/or use with their students, and we've been available to help students register to vote.

Fall Appeal: Help us move the needle to make it our most successful yet

No gift is too small (or too large) to help us continue to impact students' lives.  Read more and donate here.

Due to COVID-19 we had to reschedule our our signature annual fundraising event, which is normally held in the fall. We will be following state and county guidelines to determine how to best hold our Authors for Literacy event for the health and safety of all. In the meantime, we will share more details in the coming months about our very special guest, so mark your calendar now!

We are so grateful for our community!

"I love being able to watch my student unfold in learning this new language. You can see how it opens up all these doors, because she's now able to express herself through written and verbal communication."

Evangeline G., ESOL tutor

“Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has been so wonderful for our family. The books aren’t just fun- they are also inclusive and diverse and full of good lessons! I just have one kid enrolled currently (3yrs) but have two older ones that aged out, so we’ve been participating  since Buncombe County first started. We are so thankful that we’ve been able to participate in this program!” 

Shelby K., Dolly Parton's Imagination Library parent

Volunteer tutors make it happen!

Please help us spread the word. Thank you for your continuous support!