National Coalition for Literacy

Peter Waite, NCL President

This has been a very busy few months for the National Coalition for Literacy. Initially, it was historic with the first ever quarterly meeting canceled in February due to the never-ending Washington snows. Fortunately, that has not stopped the activities of our committees, public policy work, or national advocacy trainings.    

Our Dollar General grant has produced several new technology features as well our fall North Carolina workshop. An excellent follow up session in North Carolina was conducted by Marsha Tait and Jackie Taylor in April and our Ohio Partnerships and Advocacy Symposium is complete with approximately 80-90 participating. 

In addition to this work, our public policy team also put together an excellent set of national workshops and plenary sessions at the joint COABE/ProLiteracy conference in Chicago.   Evaluations were very positive for all sessions co-sponsored by the Coalition. The Public Policy Debate was also webcast to allow for great participation and the video archive is now online.

Internally we are continuing to finalize our proposed by-laws changes and expect to have those to present at our May meeting. John Segota is chairing that committee and Heidi Silver-Pacuilla is assisting with development of the final proposal. We will keep NCL Members posted as the committee work progresses.   

We have streamlined a number of our internal financial controls under the leadership of Geri Mulligan and have strengthened our overall reporting and monitoring.

Very shortly we will begin work on our next Coalition awards selection as annual awards event.  Please begin thinking about potential nominees. We will also begin our annual Board nominations process soon.   

We look forward to seeing you at our May meeting and suspect the snow will have melted by then.  

Peter Waite