What We Do

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In the U.S.—Programs—Promising Practices: Reducing Waiting Lists in Adult Education and Literacy Programs

Dollar General Literacy Foundation has grants available to adult literacy organizations to help them reduce student waiting lists. These Waiting List Reduction Grants are available to nonprofit adult literacy organizations who provide service in adult basic education, General Educational Development (GED) diploma preparation, or English as a second language. The maximum grant is $10,000. Applications are due by September 30, 2010. More information is available here.

In January 2007, the National Council of State Directors of Adult Education reported that 93,840 potential students were waiting for services from programs receiving federal and state funds. More than half of ProLiteracy's group affiliates also reported they had waiting lists during the same time period, both for basic literacy and for English-as-a-second-language services.

It's important that literacy programs find ways to immediately engage these potential students in learning activities or risk losing them. With a grant from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, ProLiteracy initiated a project to identify and disseminate promising practices that programs can use to help reduce the number of students on waiting lists. The experiences and lessons learned from ProLiteracy's work with 23 programs are documented in the following materials:

• Promising Practices: Reducing Waiting Lists in Adult Education and Literacy Programs (pdf), a booklet of local programs' promising practices
• The Write to Read is a seven-minute video from the Alameda County, CA program (requires high speed Internet connection)
• Reducing Waiting Lists—A Community Partnership is a nine-minute video from the West Chester, PA program (Requires high speed internet connection)
• Resources from six model programs (available in zip files) include sample curricula, training outlines, recruitment flyers, and job descriptions used by the programs and referred to in the Promising Practices booklet.
  Greater Columbia Literacy Council, SC
  Literacy Council of Kitsap, WA
  Memphis Literacy Council, TN
  Volunteer English Program in Chester County, PA
  Waubonsee Community College Adult Literacy Project, IL
  Write to Read, CA
• Reducing Student Waiting Lists is a free, self-paced online course for professional development available on Thinkfinity Literacy Network, an online education and literacy resource supported by the Verizon Foundation as part of the Verizon Thinkfinity Consortium. (Requires login to enroll.)
• Additional Resources:
  Suggested Improvements to Local Student Referral Systems (pdf) is a resource developed through the Student Referral Expansion Project, funded by Dollar General Literacy Foundation. ProLiteracy studied 174 local literacy programs in nine communities across the United States to determine what helps turn student referrals into student enrollments.

Send questions or comments to info@proliteracy.org.