Feature
January
26
Service Organizations Address Literacy Concerns
by The Weekly Staff
The Rotary Club of Golden Meadow and Rotary District 6200 partnered with International Orthodox Christian Charities to offer a shipment of educational materials to local educational, recreational and community-based service organizations.
Rotary District 6200 distributed reading and science kits, flash cards, classroom libraries, reading books, textbooks, workbooks, computer programs and math materials to over 1,000 children in an effort to fight illiteracy across the area. The YMCA, education departments of universities, community and day care centers, Rotary Clubs throughout the district and other local organizations helped to get these materials in the hands of the children during a cold day in December.
Nearly 30 volunteers from over 15 different schools and organizations gave up a Saturday to go to a warehouse in Baton Rouge to pick up the educational materials. The last distribution was in the heat of August. Despite the December cold, volunteers filled their trailers, SUVs and vehicles with what many of them called early Christmas gifts.
The Rev. James Proctor and Dr. Ezora Proctor
collect educational materials for the literacy
projects their club sponsors in Crowley, La. Some
of these educational materials were used in their
homeless shelter to give to children. Other materials
were used for tutoring both children and adults.
Mike Collins, past District 6200 governor, and his wife, Martha, who serves as the district’s literacy chair, had made connections with other organizations that could help to promote efforts of the local Rotary Club. They eventually worked with IOCC, based out of Baltimore, Md. Like Rotary International, IOCC is an international organization that works with churches to provide emergency relief and developmental programs to those in need across the globe.
IOCC maintains a working relationship with textbook companies, which support the mission of Rotary District 6200. As a result of this relationship, both children and adults among the local population have been the beneficiaries of an approximated $12 million in educational materials that have been distributed across south Louisiana over the past three years to organizations that address literacy needs.
Though the Collinses, who are both retired educators with over 55 years of experience between them, work directly with the Rotary Club of Golden Meadow and Rotary District 6200 on literacy projects that target early childhood to adult literacy, they recognize that much of the work done in south Louisiana is done by educators, volunteers and organizations that work to fight illiteracy.
Volunteers use the distributed educational materials in innovative ways. One after-school tutoring program allows the students to keep the books they have completed reading within the tutoring sessions. A Rotary Club participated in a Christmas parade and handed out books instead of beads to the children along the parade route.
Universities have made these materials available for student-teachers to use a resources. Although these books cannot be used directly in public classrooms, a public school teacher said she gives out the books directly to students as incentives for work well done. Some teachers use the workbooks as homework, classroom practice and even as review for state testing.
A representative for another organization said workers hand out these books to low-income children so they can have ownership of their own books. One club gave out boxed libraries with a variety of 60 books in them to low-income families for Christmas.
Research shows that the nation’s prisons are filled with illiterate inmates. Children who live in households in which one or both parents are illiterate are more likely to grow up in poverty and are more likely to live in poverty as adults.
Research also shows that children who exhibit higher reading skills at an early age usually perform better in school, are more likely to finish high school and go on to trade schools or universities.
Studies have also shown that literate people typically earn higher salaries and have fewer health problems than the illiterate population.
While the Collinses recognize that their efforts with IOCC and countless volunteers won’t address all literacy concerns, they do hope to make progress by making a difference one life at a time.
