The Youth Literacy program recently added fourteen trained volunteers to its amazing team! During the last week of February, these tutors completed the fifteen-hour training course and are now equipped to provide 1:1 tutoring support in reading, writing, and spelling to elementary-aged students. They will begin working with students in March and continue until the end of the school year in June. In addition, this training marked the beginning of a new partnership with the Foster Grandparent Program, which provides a beautiful multigenerational component to our program!
Planning is underway for the 2nd Annual Summer Camp Reading Initiative, an 8-week summer literacy program offered in collaboration with Youth Transformed for Life and the Christine W. Avery Learning Center summer camps. Our goal is to double the number of students participating from 40 to 80 campers and double the number of paid internships from 14 to 30. The interns, primarily young adults of color, will be trained as tutors to work with the campers to combat summer slide by strengthening literacy skills and developing a love for reading!
Update: Literacy Together's Afghan students
We're currently providing one-on-one tutoring (or one-on-two in the case of a few groups of relatives or friends learning together) to 27 Afghan newcomers, with another handful of matchups in the works. We offer a weekly Zoom meeting on Fridays for all the tutors who are working with Afghans, where we share ideas and resources and brainstorm solutions to challenges. There is still a great need for volunteers who want to support the newcomers in various ways, from teaching English to transportation to job- and house-hunting.
Authors for Literacy Dinner & Auction Thursday, May 5, 2022
After many delays, we are looking forward to finally gathering together with the author of Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens. Click here for more information.
In our 2021 to 2025 strategic plan, we stated that, as resources permit, we will watch for opportunities to move into some other areas, and Digital Literacy was one of them. As a result, we are now offering Digital Literacy classes for our Spanish-speaking ESOL students. Patricia Furnish -the ESOL Program Associate- will be the instructor! Please get in touch with her if you have any questions.
The Imagination Library puts books into the hands and hearts of children worldwide. We're now mailing a free book each month to over 4,600registered children in Buncombe County.
Here is a photo of Literacy Together's staff and board retreat 2022! What a fantastic team! We are so excited to keep spreading the love for our mission and vision! Thanks, Sarah Benoit from JB Media, for facilitating!
Last weekend, Literacy Together participated in the Volunteer Expo 2022. Thank you to the Junior League of Asheville for the opportunity! Here is a photo of Marilyn Cortes (Board Chair) and Laura Bernhein (Outreach and Communication Director).
We want to thank AVL Today for continuing to feature our online volunteer orientation meetings in its daily newsletters :)
THANK YOU to all who have donated items from our Amazon Wishlist!
Many potential volunteers find out about us from Volunteer Match, and the more awesome reviews we have on the site, the better! If you are a tutor and could take a few minutes to submit a review here, you'd be helping us recruit more volunteer tutors, and we'll be very grateful. Thanks in advance! Below is what one of our tutors said about us!
