This article contains promotional content .(February 2018) |
Founded | 1989 |
---|---|
Type | 501(c)(3) |
Focus | Literacy |
Location | |
Website | Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County |
The Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Boynton Beach, Florida. Its stated mission is to improve literacy in Palm Beach County. [1] One in seven adults in Palm Beach County is unable to read and understand information found in books, newspapers, magazines, brochures and manuals. [2] The organization's operates with the assistance of over 9,000 volunteers. [3] In 2013, the Literacy Coalition provided services to more than 25,000 adults, to children and families. [4]
Representatives of business, government, libraries, the school district, the media, literacy providers and other community groups established the Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County in 1989. [5] In 1990, a Literacy Hotline was established as a single contact point for volunteer tutors and adult learners. [6] In 1991, the first Love of Literacy luncheon fundraiser was held. [7] In 1997, Literacy AmeriCorps began with funding from the Corporation for Community and National Service for the purpose of recruiting, training, placing, and supervising members to perform literacy tutoring with adults, children, youth and families throughout Palm Beach County. [8] Also in 1997, the Literacy Coalition participated in the America Reads Pilot Program, as one of 15 national sites to involve volunteers with reading to at-risk elementary and preschool children. [9] Additional initiatives with which the organization has maintained involvement include Care to Read, Early Reading First, Reach Out and Read, Read Together Palm Beach County, Village Readers Program, though which thousands of Palm Beach County residents have benefited. [10]
Community partners include Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, ASPIRA, Adopt-a-Family of the Palm Beaches, Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, Boys Town South Florida, Center for Family Services of Palm Beach County, Children's Services Council of Palm Beach County, City of Boynton Beach, City of Delray Beach, City of Greenacres, City of West Palm Beach, Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, Farmworker Children's Council, Guatemalan-Maya Center, Gulfstream Goodwill's Transitions to Life Academy, Health Care District of Palm Beach County, Hispanic Human Resources, Lynn University, Max M. Fisher Boys and Girls Club, Norton Museum of Art, Salvation Army, Palm Beach Atlantic College, Palm Beach State College, School District of Palm Beach County, Take Stock in Children, United Way of Palm Beach County, Quantum Foundation, WXEL TV 42, and YMCA of Boynton Beach. [11] Partnerships with local municipal and county libraries have been established with Boca Raton Public Library, Boynton Beach City Library, Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach, as well as the Palm Beach County Library System. [12]
The Love of Literacy Luncheon began as the annual awareness and fundraising event for the Coalition with speakers through the years such as Former First Lady Barbara Bush, Danny Glover, Henry Winkler, Wally Amos, Walter Anderson, LeVar Burton, Retired Senator Paul Simon, Sean Astin, Melissa Gilbert, Ben Carson, Ann Patchett, Byron Pitts, Linda Wirthheimer, Pat Conroy, and Brad Meltzer. [13]
Loop the Lake for Literacy is a fundraising and advocacy event hosted by the Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County. Participating bike riders follow a course along Lake Okeechobee's outer banks. The ride is one of the Literacy Coalition's most successful fundraising events. [14]
The American Girl Fashion Show is an event which raises money for the Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County's education programs tailored to children, youth, and adults. Models provide an educational look at how generations of American Girls have used clothing to express their own unique style and personality. [15]
The Outreach Program promotes adult literacy programmes and recruits adult learners and volunteer tutors throughout Palm Beach County. Adults who require basic literacy skills, English proficiency, and/or subject mastery in order to pass the GED test are targeted. [16] In partnership with the School District of Palm Beach County, the Palm Beach County Library System Adult Literacy Project and a number of community-based organizations, the Literacy Coalition connects adult learners and volunteer tutors with local literacy programs. [17]
Budding Readers is an early literacy program that matches three-year-old children at child care centers with a Reading Partner for a weekly one-to-one interactive reading session. Reading Partners are intended to nurture the blossoming of these "budding readers" into lifelong lovers of books, reading and learning as they work with them to develop the early literacy skills they will need for future success in school. [18] As of 2012, 16 Reading Partners at partnership sites served 417 children, 91 percent of the children demonstrated development in early literacy skills needed for future success in school and 4,917 books were distributed to children to begin a home library. [19]
The Workplace and Community Education Program provides customized instruction for adults who need help improving their English language skills, obtaining a GED or addressing specific workplace needs. Classes are provided at workplace and community sites throughout the county by trained adult education instructors. [20] Classes are tailored to each particular site and the skill levels of the students. The adult students, who attend classes twice a week, develop literacy skills to prepare them for enhanced employment opportunities and/or future education. [21]
To involve 10,000 - 20,000 adults throughout Palm Beach County in reading the same book at the same time. [22] This community reading campaign will entice adults who can read, but often don't, to get involved in the habit of reading again. It will also promote community dialogue and engagement as citizens gather together to discuss key themes. Former Governor Jeb Bush wrote to every city in Florida and encouraged them to form "One Book, One Community" reading campaigns based on the Palm Beach County model. [23] Read Together Palm Beach County produced a handbook on how to conduct a similar reading campaign and Former Governor Bush urged municipalities to use this book to guide them in their campaigns. [24] Participants include businesses, libraries, chambers of commerce, municipalities, local book clubs, neighborhood associations and many other groups.
The Literacy Coalition, in conjunction with Prime Time Palm Beach County, both of which receive significant funding from the Children's Services Council of Palm Beach County, encourage afterschool programs across Palm Beach County to participate with their own on-site celebrations of how bystanders can make a difference when it comes to bullying. [25]
In March 2012, the Quantum Foundation honored the Literacy Coalition with a "Change Leader" award for the service that has been provided to the community through the Literacy AmeriCorps program. [26] The Palm Beach County School District has honored the Coalition with Above and Beyond, and Business Partnership Award for its work with children attending elementary schools in disadvantaged District neighborhoods. [27] In 2005, the Literacy Coalition was one of 78 organizations selected nationally for the Bank of America Foundation's Neighborhood Builder Award for exhibiting "the highest standard in community building." [28] The Children's Services Council of Palm Beach County awarded the group its annual Striving for Excellence Award, in recognition of the Coalition's outstanding governance and administration. [29] The Literacy Coalition has earned their five consecutive 4-star rating from Charity Navigator. [30] The Literacy Coalition was also among the first agencies to be certified by Nonprofits First, a Palm Beach County group advocating for efficiency in area nonprofit organization. [31]
Palm Beach County is a county in the southeastern part of Florida, located in the Miami metropolitan area. It is Florida's third-most populous county after Miami-Dade County and Broward County and the 26th-most populous in the United States, with 1,492,191 residents as of the 2020 census. Its county seat and largest city is West Palm Beach, which had a population of 117,415 as of 2020. Named after one of its oldest settlements, Palm Beach, the county was established in 1909, after being split from Miami-Dade County. The county's modern-day boundaries were established in 1963.
Boynton Beach is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is situated about 57 miles (92 km) north of Miami. The 2020 census recorded a population of 80,380. Boynton Beach is located in the Miami metropolitan area, which was home to 6,138,333 people at the 2020 census. The city is named after Nathan Boynton, a Civil War major and Michigan politician who became one of the first settlers in the area in 1895. Boynton Beach is located north of Delray Beach, south of Hypoluxo and Lantana, and east of Golf, while the municipalities of Briny Breezes, Gulf Stream, Manalapan, and Ocean Ridge are situated to the east across the Intracoastal Waterway.
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The Schoolhouse Children's Museum & Learning Center is located in a historic school building, the Boynton School, at 129 East Ocean Avenue in Boynton Beach, Palm Beach County, Florida.
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Adolescent literacy refers to the ability of adolescents to read and write. Adolescence is a period of rapid psychological and neurological development, during which children develop morally, cognitively, and socially. All of these three types of development have influence—to varying degrees—on the development of literacy skills.
Notre Dame Mission Volunteers is a faith-based non-profit organization founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1992. In 1995, NDMV sought a partnership with AmeriCorps to allow for an increase in the number of members, offering greater community service in financially limited sites. This partnership formed Notre Dame Mission Volunteers AmeriCorps. The program began with 46 service members placed in four communities: Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, and Apopka, Florida. Building on the initial success of these four sites, NDMVA has continued to systematically extend the range and depth of its AmeriCorps program. Notre Dame Mission Volunteers AmeriCorps members serve in seventeen sites across the United States. Notre Dame Mission Volunteers also has a separate international program in which members currently serve in four international sites in Brazil, Haiti, Nigeria, and Peru. Its National Office is currently based out of Baltimore, Maryland.
Virginia Beach Public Library (VBPL), located in Virginia Beach, Virginia is a comprehensive library system serving Virginia Beach, an independent city with a population of 450,000 in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area of Virginia. The library supports the educational and leisure needs of citizens with a system of area libraries, a bookmobile, a virtual library, the Wahab Public Law Library, the Municipal Reference Library, and the Library and Resource Center for the Deaf, Blind, and Visually Impaired (DBVI). The collection contains more than 1 million print and non-print items.
Established in 1985, the Florida Literacy Coalition (FLC) is a nonprofit organization that promotes, supports and advocates for the effective delivery of quality adult and family literacy services in the state of Florida.
The most recent comprehensive data on adult literacy in the United States come from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) study conducted in stages from 2012 to 2017 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). English literacy test results from 2014 suggest that 21% of U.S. adults ages 16 to 65 score at or below PIAAC literacy level 1, meaning they have difficulty "[completing] tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences." Included in that 21% is the 4.2% of respondents who were unable to be assessed due to language barriers, cognitive disability, or physical disability. A 2020 study by the Gallup analysis company funded by the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy estimated that getting all U.S. adults to at least PIAAC literacy level 3 proficiency would raise American's incomes by $2.2 trillion.
Literacy Volunteers of Illinois (LVI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes adult literacy throughout Illinois. It serves families, adults, and out-of-school teens.
The Palm Beach County Library System is the public library system of Palm Beach County, Florida. Its headquarters, the Main Library, is located in an unincorporated area near West Palm Beach, the county seat. The system was established in 1967 and serves Palm Beach County through the Main Library and 20 branch libraries. Its first library branch opened in Tequesta on September 25, 1969, and its first bookmobile five days later. Unlike neighboring Broward and Miami-Dade counties, where most municipalities have joined their county's library system, most municipalities in Palm Beach County continue to operate their own city libraries, leading the county system to focus on the more suburban communities. Instead, a cooperative system model is in place to allow interoperation between county and municipal libraries.
A sighted child who is reading at a basic level should be able to understand common words and answer simple questions about the information presented. They should also have enough fluency to get through the material in a timely manner. Over the course of a child's education, these foundations are built on to teach higher levels of math, science, and comprehension skills. Children who are blind not only have the education disadvantage of not being able to see: they also miss out on the very fundamental parts of early and advanced education if not provided with the necessary tools.
The Virginia Literacy Foundation (VLF), is an organization whose mission is to reduce adult illiteracy in Virginia by providing funding and technical support to private, volunteer adult literacy organizations that teach low level literacy adults to read and write with one-on-one instruction and tutoring. The VLF was founded by Jeannie Baliles, Virginia's First Lady from 1986 to 1990, and founding director Mark Emblidge, and was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization in 1987. The VLF supports grass roots organizations via challenge grants, direct consultation, and program development training with public partners like The Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center. The VLF also works in partnership with public institutions, corporations, and private literacy organizations in Virginia to address adult illiteracy in the workplace and to provide family literacy training to teachers and parents. The VLF is governed by the founding executive director, Mark E. Emblidge, and a board of directors chaired by Jeannie Baliles.
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