Change Lives: Help Us Teach Adults to Read

Help us build on our successes from 2023 and continue into 2024!

In 2023 we...

• connected with social service agencies and job training programs who didn't know what to do with their clients who can't read (Now they refer them to us!)

• connected with literacy foundations who don't offer basic literacy tutoring

• ran continuous cycles of training sessions, training volunteers all across the country.

• began setting up adult literacy programs in libraries

• created ever more resources for adult reading students so they don't have to resort to children's materials

• held our first official graduation for students who have completed the program

• continued teaching adults how to read!

We do all of this at no cost to the agencies, volunteers, or students. The only way we can provide these services to free is because of the support we get from you.

You can make a difference by donating today to Volunteer Literacy Project Inc.

We have come so far and reached so many people. Here's the story of how we started:

Twelve years ago a woman named Fatima came into my GED prep program and said she wanted to learn to read.

She had bright intelligent eyes and stood her ground fiercely, like there was no way she was giving up. She was 35 years old and the single mother of two young children. She read at a first-grade level.

“Let’s do it!” I said. I figured it would be an easy fix. Just show her how, right?

It turns out it's not so easy. Most adults with low-literacy skills have some form of dyslexia, often in addition to a multi-generational literacy deficit, topped off by many years of educational trauma.

Most of them have been trying for their entire lives to learn to read.

When I realized I couldn't figure this out on my own, I began asking around: HOW DO YOU TEACH ADULTS TO READ?!

What I discovered was disheartening and shocking; the adult literacy world has mostly given up on the massive population of low-skilled readers. Most basic literacy programs have closed. If they are still in operation, they use ineffective methods that have been discredited.

I heard over and over that it probably wasn't possible to teach an adult to read.

And using volunteers to teach reading, with a real, complex curriculum? Forget it!

I’m here to tell you — and our many students will back us up — that it can be done. Adults — even if they are dyslexic — can learn to read! But they need a high-quality, research-backed method of instruction, and they need trained tutors.

And volunteers can be those tutors. They need a rigorous training program, a user-friendly curriculum, and support.

It's been 13 years since that realization, and in that time the Volunteer Literacy Project was born.

Here’s what we do:

• We teach adults how to read!

• We use our own phonics-based curriculum written especially for adult students.

• We train volunteers to teach the curriculum.

• We take referrals from social service agencies and job training programs who don't what to do with their clients who can't read.

• We set up literacy programs in libraries and community groups.

Our program works! Here are some of the things our students say:

• "All of a sudden words jump out at me everywhere I go.”

• "I was lost, and I started reading the street signs. My wife starts yelling, "You can read!"

• "At my new job they give me a checklist every day. I can read it."

• "These classes changed my life. I can read now."

• "My goal was to learn to read before I died. I did that."

• "My scores went up so much that they are putting me in a GED class."

• "I passed the test. I got my high school diploma!"

36 million adults in the United States are locked behind the cruel barrier of illiteracy. They can’t read street signs or restaurant menus or health information or job applications or any other of a multitude of texts. We need your help to change this.

It's been 13 years since Fatima walked into my program. Since then she learned how to read, went on to get her high school diploma, and saw her children through college. We have seen other students get better jobs, begin reading to their children, and able get around the world on their own, reading signs, reading their mail, even reading books on their own.

We want to keep doing this and we want to do more of it. Will you stand with us?

Join us as we fight this essential social justice issue: literacy.

Thank you for your support,

Larissa Phillips

Director and Founder

Volunteer Literacy Project