Our Mission
According to an estimate by the National Institute for Literacy, 40 million Americans function at the lowest skill levels in reading, writing, and math. 60% of American adults read English at a 7th grade level or below. Most of these adults have limited access to literacy material and instruction. In addition, learners in rural areas are often hampered by a lack of access to libraries, community colleges, and adult education centers.
Even when educational material is available, it often fails because it's not developed for ethnically and culturally diverse learners with multiple learning styles. Local literacy providers and learners desperately need access to free, quality, and culturally appropriate literacy materials.
Literacyworks, an educational nonprofit organization, was created to address these unmet needs of underprivileged and underrepresented adults, families and children. By using educational technology to increase the quality, availability, and accessibility of literacy curriculum for individuals with low literacy skills, Literacyworks is helping people secure better jobs, become better parents, and contribute more to their community.
Our mission is twofold:
- We provide free, top-quality multimedia educational materials, adaptable for ethnically and culturally diverse learners and for multiple learning styles. We deliver these materials through the Internet, CDs and video to literacy and education organizations, including library, community-based, and public adult and family education and literacy programs.
- We assist education and literacy programs with consultation in the areas of technology support, educational material, funding, and assessment. Our expertise includes resource and grant development, staff training to integrate technology into learning and teaching, technical assistance in the design and maintenance of learning laboratories, and the creation of meaningful methods and assessment for distance-learning programs.
In addition, through our vast network of partnerships, Literacyworks promotes more successful collaboration between education and literacy programs to share curriculum, resources, and ideas.
Literacyworks also coordinates the Western/Pacific LINCS Regional Technology Center of the National Institute for Literacy. Through the LINCS Project we partner with national, state and local library and education programs.
