“Leading Through Reading” Includes Everyone!

Stories from the Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County

Expanding literacy awareness has been the passion of the Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County for over twenty years.  Its Read Together program is today the biggest literacy marketing force in the county, engaging thousands of people from rural church groups to urban civic organizations, from libraries to newspapers, in choosing, reading and discussing books.  Under Executive Director Darlene Kostrub’s leadership, every sector of the county is included in Coalition’s activities.  The following two stories dramatize that commitment to “Leading Through Reading.”

“Everyone gets affirmed – Everyone’s a winner” in the Adult Student Essay Contest

“Last year, 800 people submitted essays, writing on the subject, ‘If you could spend the day with President Obama, what would you talk about?’” said Darlene, describing the Coalition’s annual Adult Student Essay Contest.  Already in 2010, the Literacy Coalition has received hundreds of entries from students in faith- and community-based programs and in public GED and ABE programs, writing on the topic, “If you had one day to change the world, what would you do?”

The Adult Student Essay Contest encourages all adult learners to submit essays, each of which is read for content and returned to the authors with written comments by volunteers from Lawyers for Literacy, Junior League, Bankers for Literacy and a host of other community leaders.  Essay participants, representing all literacy levels, are recognized at a March banquet.  On April 15, the writers come together for a big reception.  As Darlene explains, “When they see and hear from all kinds of people from all over the county – all of them adult learners – they feel proud to be part of this literacy movement.”

Glades Family Education:  Celebrating a Model of Leadership Development

When the Barbara Bush Foundation published its 2009 Celebrating Family Literacy for Twenty Years, Palm Beach County’s Glades Family Education was one of nine programs lifted up out of the 773 family literacy programs supported by the Foundation over the years.  Located in a community that lives with great poverty, Glades Family Education used an early Barbara Bush Foundation grant to leverage support from many other sources of funding, enabling it not only to grow and thrive but to build a center that today is bursting at the seams.

“Three staff are former students,” Darlene says, emphasizing the Coalition’s commitment to developing community leaders.  “Ana Alvarez and Lydia Guzman are in charge of our early education programs, and Laura Calderon teaches an adult education class.”  Darlene added,   “Laura was recognized as the Barbara Bush Adult Learner of the Year in 2006.  Even as she is now a teacher, she’s still a student – an inspiration to her fellow students and a model leader for her community.”

For more information about the Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County, visit www.literacypbc.org or call Darlene Kostrub, Executive Director, at 561-279-9103.