A local nonprofit organization addressing adult literacy has moved into a new center which will give expanded options for providing services to adults in need.
The Literacy Network is a Madison nonprofit dedicated to addressing community and workplace literacy. According to its website, one in seven Dane County adults struggle with low literacy — around 55,000 people.
Jeff Burkhart, the executive director of the Literacy Network, said they serve more than 1,000 adult learners every year, mainly through working on improving their English language skills. He said 90 percent of those they work with are low-income people of color.
The Literacy Network provides a chance to reduce poverty and gives people a way to help fulfill their own personal goals, said Burkhart.
“We help the population we work with to get better jobs, to communicate with their kid’s schools, to help their kids with reading, to connect with the healthcare system to get better care — so really essential things people need for their lives,” Burkhart said.
Students include immigrants from 68 different countries, Burkhart said. Others were refugees who weren’t able to attend school.
Most people are working to improve English language skills to get better jobs and cultivate other skills that can help benefit their day-to-day lives, Burkhart said.
Mary Louise Gomez, a University of Wisconsin professor of literacy studies and teacher education, said low literacy is potentially detrimental for adults and their families.
While career readiness is an important reason to improve literacy, Gomez said people do not always think of the social aspects of reading. Not only can low literacy limit employment opportunities, it also can limit the social connections in people’s lives.
Gomez said parents who read with children create better social relationships with them when they talk about stories, which gives children a better understanding of dialogue and an enhanced motivation to attend school.
“If parents can’t read to their children or talk about what they’re reading, then this may build up stronger ideas in teachers that parents don’t care to read to their children,” Gomez said. “It’s not that, it’s that the parents might not have the skills to read to their children.”
Fostering this connection also has a positive impact on young children who are learning to read.
Often, Burkhart said students who struggle in school have parents who struggle with literacy. To reduce the achievement gap, adult literacy is one big key.
“By impacting the adults that we work with, we impact their entire family,” Burkhart said.
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She said having programs like the Literacy Network in Madison can help enhance cultural and educational life by encouraging people to use libraries for social purposes.
People like to talk about what they read and share with others. If people are able to read well, Gomez said it can help build connections throughout the whole city.
“I think it’s a matter of welcoming people into our city and entering them into our civic life,” Gomez said. “All of our lives are enhanced whether you’re white and a professional or whatever your ethnic or racial heritage is.”
In Madison, the Literacy Network is the only group that provides direct individualized programming for each person coming to the programs, Burkhart said.
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The Literacy Network works with the Morgridge Center for Public Service through a Badger Volunteers location. Burkhart said the volunteers work at Madison College through the academic tutoring program, helping people pass their GEDs and move on to different levels of programming. He said that Badger Volunteers is able to see the progress of the individuals in the literacy program.
Burkhart said the program has had such a huge impact because of the thousands of hours of volunteer time. In 2015, collectively there were 30,000 hours of volunteer time.
In the future, Burkhart said the Literacy Network plans on expanding their programming to double the number of people they are serving in 2017.
“We can only do that if we have more support from the community,” Burkhart said.
