Building a Strong Literacy Coalition

1. Building a Strong Literacy Coalition 100% Literacy Through 100% Community Engagement

2. The Collaboration Model Literacy coalitions have grown from 12 fifteen years ago to nearly 70.

3. What is Community Literacy? It is a discourse of shared problem solving that leads to increased literacy levels and united communities, promoting the vision of 100% literacy through 100% community engagement. Community literacy includes all family members and community stakeholders with a vested interest in a highly literacy community to promote personal success, economic, educational and social justice.

4. Low Literacy Is the Number One Indicator of Poverty • Our task is to address the needs of the millions of people who have limited literacy skills resulting in individual poverty and lack of community prosperity. • Solving this problem gets at the root of educational, social and economic issues in a way that no single subject does.

6. Changing Demographics • Need to support the growing numbers of non-English speakers • Need to address issues of race and equity • Need to address poverty through the fundamental issue -- increasing literacy skills for all

7. Why is Literacy the #1 Issue We Must Address? • A skilled workforce creates: • a stronger economy by attracting more jobs • benefits and higher wages • decreasing turnover and increasing productivity • creating a community with less poverty and crime. • Stronger families support the education of children by breaking the cycle of intergenerational illiteracy

8. Lifelong Learning

9. There is No Question that higher literacy levels result in … • Greater civic participation moving communities toward justice and equality for all, generating volunteerism and charitable work, energizing an informed electorate, and creating a cleaner, safer environment. • A healthier population raising the quality of life in a community and reducing health care costs through lower morbidity rates, better prevention and screening, better navigation of the healthcare system, and better management of major chronic disease.

10. What Can Coalitions Do? • The challenge is that the solution needs a mega scale approach that is evaluated, supported and sustained over time. • It requires collaboration on a scale not seen in community literacy initiatives in the past.

11. Trends – Community Literacy • There is an increase in funding public/private collaborations across the country around the issue of literacy infusion (programmatic, fund development, awareness and regional planning). • More coordination by creating partnerships across program types and traditional funding streams to address the issues that create poverty and the underlying low literacy skills. • Pipelines for transition to work and college

12. Coalitions Offer Important Solutions • a coordination approach • high level leadership • a regional plan • a centralized tracking system • a quality assurance process across program types and funding streams • sufficient resources for all in need to access the system • a timeframe with bold targets and measurable, attainable deadlines

13. Efforts must be targeted and effective and customized for each community

14. Phases of Development • Planning • pre-planning research, leadership team, steering committee, leadership team, forums, stakeholders meetings, development of plan • Transition • Structure and governance, fund development, endorsement, start-up issues • Implementation • Low hanging fruit, marketing, launch, central tracking, first year goals, targets and potholes!

15. Phases of Growth • 1. Networking • 2. Emerging • 3. Developing • 4. Sustaining • 5. Excelling