While getting her GED, Monica noticed other students having difficulties reading. This sparked her interest in literacy. After completing Laubach training, she opened a Literacy/ ABE/GED study program at a community center in a rural area. She and her husband put in $6,000 to $7,000 to get the program started and she was able to augment that base with $950 from the community. Her constant concern is raising enough money to keep this small program open. As she explains : “Not everybody can go to a regular GED program and make it. Right now I’m getting 17 and 18-year olds within the LD classes. I like to take the ones that are harder, that need the help more.”

It was Conrad’s wife who suggested he enroll in a literacy council that was formed in 1987. As his skills improved, he became more and more involved in advocacy efforts. By 1991, he was totally involved:

I not only work on a local level, I work on a state and national level also. I have four or five different conferences throughout the year I go to. The more positive things I was doing, the more I wanted to do because it really felt good to be able to help other people. I started getting involved and started getting dressed up more and going to the conferences and I’d come home and tell my wife about it for a whole month.

This situation caused friction in the family. Out of this difficulty came a workshop entitled “New Readers and Family Relationship” that Conrad and his wife present at tutor training sessions and conferences. The purpose of the session is to tell the tutors that “spouses need to know what’s going on in a reading program. If they can go along and see that their husband or wife is sitting down with a tutor and this is the lesson program we’re doing, then that explains a lot of things; but if you don’t get the family involved, things can be thought of that’s not happening.”

Advocacy for Literacy

Other participants are engaged in advocacy roles promoting adult education programs to dropouts and encouraging children and teens to remain in school. One year after Quincy first met his tutor in a VA shelter for homeless veterans, he became employed, recruited ten other veterans to enter the literacy program, appeared on a radio talk show, was interviewed on television, and spoke to young parish members about the value of an education. A recent GED graduate at the age of 73, Kelly is “speaking in churches to the young people. I can encourage them more about education and how to stay in school and to get an education while very young. When you get older, it seems to be harder.”

After four years and 300 hours of being tutored, Peter upgraded his reading skills from a second to a 12th grade level and was given leadership opportunities at work and as chairman of a vo lunteer fire company. These leadership skills led him to an advocacy role on behalf of literacy on both local and national stages.