Free Time: Literacy tutors open doors

DO IT
Donating just an hour’s conversation a week will open doors of opportunity for people shut out by language barriers. You don’t need foreign language or teaching expertise to take part in literacy training programs across the suburbs. Once you complete your tutor training, you meet with an adult student at a public place like the library at a time convenient to you. Volunteers will know their students’ goals and how to help them arrive there, and all the while will be expanding their own cultural horizons.

WHOM IT HELPS
“A person may come to us with little English, who wants to help her children with homework,” says Peg Coker, executive director of Literacy Volunteers Fox Valley, which serves students from 25 countries ringing the globe, and always has a waiting list. “They will perhaps learn to read the menus, the bulletins that come home from school, and … how to read the books the child is reading in school.” She points out that just explaining U.S. idioms like hush puppies on the school menu can be a comfort to a family puzzled and possibly disquieted by images of quieting dogs. In addition to wanting to help their children succeed, many students seek language skills to help them advance at their jobs.

HOW TO HELP
As students learn to read, write, speak and understand the English language, Coker says they also are being helped to assimilate into the community successfully. Besides the role of tutor, volunteers can opt to help organize or support fundraisers, like the Fox Valley program’s annual Trivia Bee for Literacy in March. Monetary donations are always welcome, and the agencies’ Web sites include their wish lists. Saturday tutor training begins Jan. 23 for programs offered by The Congregation of St. Joseph in La Grange Park, where the need for volunteers is desperate, says Gloria Alicea, community relations manager. To find the literacy program closest to you, visit literacyforadults.org and type in your zip code.

MORE INFO

• Literacy Volunteers Fox Valley in St. Charles; (630) 584-2811; www.lvfv.org
• Literacy Volunteers Western Cook County, Oak Park; (708) 848-8499; www.lvwcc.org
• Morton College, Project C.A.R.E., Cicero; (708) 656-8000, Ext. 383; www.morton.edu/aecpo/projectcare.asp
• The Congregation of St. Joseph in La Grange Park programs, serving various Cook and DuPage towns; (708) 482-5060 for School on Wheels Literacy Bus and (708) 482-5035 for Tutors on Wheels; www.schoolonwheels.com
• World Relief DuPage, World Relief Education Program, Wheaton; (630) 462-7566; www.wr.org
• Literacy DuPage, Naperville; (630) 416-6699; www.literacyvolunteersdupage.org