Literacy Summit 2009

I just returned from the Charleston County Literacy Summit 2009, where John Corcoran was the guest speaker.

As inspiring as his story is, the most exciting part of the event was at the end when the room broke off into small table discussion groups. Being surrounded by literacy advocates from other local organizations, we brainstormed ways to promote literacy in our community. We all know how detrimental illiteracy is, but what do we DO about it.

Thanks to President Obama, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in grassroots activism. Despite all other methods of outreach, I think this proves the most effective and rewarding way of uniting people. With that in mind, our small discussion grouped talked about ways we can ban together to offer the community a unified, strong, sustainable network of assistance.

Perhaps one of the most inspiring examples of this type of community-wide outreach is the Harlem Project started by Geoffrey Canada:

"Canada's new program combines educational, social and medical services. It starts at birth and follows children to college. It meshes those services into an interlocking web, and then it drops that web over an entire neighborhood. It operates on the principle that each child will do better if all the children around him are doing better. So instead of waiting for residents to find out about the services on their own, the organization's recruiters go door-to-door to find participants, sometimes offering prizes and raffles and free groceries to parents who enroll their children in the group's programs. What results is a remarkable level of ''market penetration,'' as the organization describes it. Eighty-eight percent of the roughly 3,400 children under 18 in the 24-block core neighborhood are already served by at least one program, and this year Canada began to extend his programs to the larger 60-block zone. The objective is to create a safety net woven so tightly that children in the neighborhood just can't slip through."

I believe that's our goal. No one slips through. Whether we're discussing literacy, computer skills, job training, poverty, no one slips through. We rely on one another, support one another, strengthen one another. This is quite idealistic, I am aware. But that is what makes it so exciting and noble.

I'm thrilled about this new initiative in our community. It's humbling and inspiring and I look forward to finding how public libraries can further serve this mission.