Literacy Lubbock

Our aim is to lower that literacy rate, thus improving the health and economics of Lubbock and the surrounding areas. By improving basic literacy, we can ensure that our students improve their health, resulting in decreases in poor health outcomes, rates of hospitalization, and poverty levels. Further, by offering GED and ESL courses, we make our students more impressive job candidates, thus lowering unemployment rates. With jobs, our students are able to afford better care of themselves and are able to contribute back to the community. In this manner, we lessen our students' need for financial aid and improve our economy.

Our strategies involve offering classes and courses designed to strengthen our students' literacy rates. We offer courses and tutoring pairs designed to teach basic literacy competency, as well as classes and tutoring focused on passing the GED, the TOEFL, and learning English as a Second Language. With only 27% of low-literate adults possessing a high school diploma or a GED, we hope that by increasing the number of GED graduates in Lubbock, we can improve their economic levels and give them better options for the future.

We are fortunate enough to have a community motivated to giving back. We have teachers and tutors prepared to put in the time and effort needed to ensure our students pass the GED, the TOEFL, or improve their reading or comprehension of English. These volunteers, along with the generous donations and grants we receive, allow us to provide our services at no charge to our students. This free incentive helps bring in students otherwise unable to pay.

We have around 500 students across our varying programs, with many of them utilizing multiple services. As for what's next, we hope to focus on our Family Literacy programs more. These programs promote reading to young children at an impressionable age. By instilling a love of reading into children, we hope to get them comfortable with books and reading, so that they excel in school and remain students through high school, if not college. To this end, we pass out free children's books to families that might otherwise be unable to afford them. And by teaching parents the value of reading to their children, we hope to spark the parents to action as well. If they read to their children, and love the time spent doing so, we hope that that will become a tradition as the child ages. And with age comes more complex books, so that both the parents and the child will steady improve their reading skills.