National Coalition for Literacy

—Guest Blog Post, Advocate Voices from the Field

Billie Izard is the Executive Director of the Certified Literate Community Program in Georgia. She blogs about Georgia’s amazing story of how adult literacy advocates put a stop to the increase in GED test fees. She has joined us on the NCL Advocacy Blog as a guest and is happy to respond to your comments or reactions.

Have a story to share? The National Coalition for Literacy is pleased and proud to feature blog articles about individuals’ experiences advocating for adult education and family literacy. Submit

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—NCL is Awarded $150,000 Grant to Continue Technology and Advocacy

By Marsha Tait

On Thursday, May 12, The Dollar General Literacy Foundation notified the National Coalition for Literacy (NCL) that we have been awarded a $150,000 grant for the coming program year.  The grant will allow NCL to continue to develop our on-line advocacy toolkit, blog, web site and use of social media to reach, train, and inform adult education advocates.

The grant will also underwrite the costs of the NCL Literacy Leadership Award event in Washington DC on September 14, and…

By Marsha Tait

The National Coalition for Literacy is pleased to announce that it will hold two public policy advocacy symposia this spring with generous support from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. The first event will be held in Nashville, TN on March 15, 2011 in partnership with the TN Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Division of Adult Education, and the TN Association of Adult and Community Education.  Newly appointed Commissioner of the TN Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Karla Davis, will speak.  The event will take place at the Sheraton Nashville Downtown Hotel. We are pleased to…

By Marsha Tait and Jackie Taylor.

Symposia

The National Coalition for Literacy is pleased to announce that it will hold two public policy advocacy symposia this spring with generous support from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. The first event will be held in Nashville, TN on March 15, 2011 in partnership with the TN Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Division of Adult Education, and the TN Association of Adult and Community Education.  The event will take place at the Sheraton Nashville Downtown Hotel. We are pleased to be offering this…

By Marsha Tait

In June, NCL was pleased to award three advocacy “mini-grants” to attendees at the NCL/Dollar General Advocacy Symposium that took place in Columbus, Ohio, April 21.

Awardees were: The Ohio Literacy Network, for their Collaborative Advocacy Project Proposal; the Ohio Association for Adult and Continuing Education for their Statewide Advocacy Symposium for Adult Basic and Literacy Education proposal; and Parma Adult Education Services for their Coalition for Advocacy for the Life‐long Learner (C.A.L.L.) proposal.  All three…

During the last several months we have had significant activity for the Coalition.

Internally, we have finalized our new structure and Barb Van Horn and Heidi Silver-Pacuilla have agreed to chair the Internal and External Committees respectively. They will be developing the new operating rules for the committees.  We will also be restructuring the Public Policy Committee and developing new protocols for that committee as well.   We hope to complete all of these activities by Sept.  15^th.

We continue to work actively on our public policy agenda and I have recently written to Cheryl Keenan to request additional meetings concerning…

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…

NCL held its second public policy advocacy symposium this month in Dublin, OH in connection with the state-wide Partnerships in Transition conference. The symposium was planned by NCL in collaboration with the Ohio Association for Adult and Continuing Education, the Ohio Literacy Network and the ABLE Resource Center Network. Speakers included Jackson Routh from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, Dr. Peter Waite, president of NCL, Aketa Marie Simmons, Press Secretary and Education Staff for Congresswoman Fudge, Ed Roberts, Congressional Aide to Senator Brown, representatives of local partnerships and collaborations in OH, and adult student Dawana Martin.