Dearborn Rotary Raises Funds for Pro-Literacy Detroit

Submitted by: Margaret Blohm

The Rotary Club of Dearborn recently hosted its third annual “Shares & Cares” breakfast fundraiser at Park Place in Dearborn. The event benefited the programs of Pro-Literacy Detroit, Michigan’s largest literacy agency that provides services to adult learners at no cost.

This year’s event raised more than $2,000.

The mission of Pro-Literacy Detroit is to give every resident of Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck the opportunity "to be an informed citizen, a supportive and involved parent, a viable employee, and a lifelong learner."

Pro-Literacy Detroit makes this possible through recruitment, training, and innovative, goal-driven tutoring programs.

More than 9,000 tutors have been trained and 12,000 learners taught through Pro-literacy Detroit programs.

Challenges that Pro-Literacy Detroit faces include 47 percent of adults in Detroit are unable to read, 75 percent of unemployed adults have difficulty reading and writing and 60 percent of the unemployed lack necessary skills to train for high-tech jobs. 

Pro-Literacy Detroit offers free individual and group tutoring, ESL tutoring, technology-based instruction, free books for adults and children, and TV and web tutoring. 

Ways to support Pro-Literacy Detroit include volunteering as a tutor, reading to a child, referring learners to Pro-Literacy Detroit, donating books, and giving financial support.

Speaking at the breakfast fundraiser, Margaret Williams, executive director of Pro-Literacy Detroit, described how her organization trains volunteers to be certified reading tutors. Each volunteer is matched with a motivated adult that wants to go back to school or get a job. 

Volunteers and adult learners meet once a week in a public location, such as a library or Pro-Literacy office for two hours of tutoring. The students are tested prior to starting the program and then every six months. Usually students progress two to three grade levels in reading within one year. The ultimate aim is to help people become independent readers, writers and speakers of English.

Bobette Jackson, an 83-year-old volunteer tutor and workshop leader, also spoke at the breakfast. She described herself as on the “downside of the hill.” A member of her church encouraged her to become involved with a forerunner of Pro-Literacy Detroit in the late 1990s.

Jackson, who is a retired medical laboratory technologist, said some of her adult students are in the program because they want to read to a grandchild or read the Bible at church.

Williamson thanked the Rotary Club of Dearborn for supporting Pro-Literacy Detroit.  The club’s support is part of a Rotary International initiative to alleviate family literacy challenges in Detroit and neighboring communities, and to break the cycle of poverty.           

”Pro-Literacy Detroit changes individuals, the people who read to children, and then the children will be prepared to read," said Dearborn Rotarian Rick Enright, who organized the Shares & Cares event.

Enright also thanked the Rotarians and 16 area sponsors for their support of Pro-Literacy Detroit.

For more information about Pro-Literacy Detroit, visit www.proliteracydetroit.org.