Return-Path: <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id f191BX903167; Thu, 8 Feb 2001 20:11:33 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 20:11:33 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <a0.fd55e78.27b49cff@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: SPBender@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:397] Recruiting partners (and vice verca) X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 129 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Status: O Content-Length: 3892 Lines: 74 In a message dated 2/8/01 6:02:57 PM Eastern Standard Time, nifl-povracelit@nifl.gov writes: << Hello George: Your program sounds intriguing. Would you share a little about how you recruit agencies -- did they approach you or vise-versa? Who at the community sites "approved" the sites' participation in the project? And, perhaps my most important question -- why did the sites sign on with this project? >> Hi, this isn't George...this is Steve Bender who preceded George in his job with Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford (LVGH)...I've moved on to another job, but am reading this exchange with great interest...George asked me to share some of the history of LVGH's attempts at establishing community partnerships...in the 12 years that I worked at LVGH, we had decidedly mixed success in our community based programming, but some of the work was really successful... our partners over the years that I was there were quite diverse...since I was a community organizer before my work at LVGH, when I got hired there, it was only natural for me to establish a "North End (of Hartford) Literacy Committee in order to help move the organizations work into the community...at this point we were working in Hartfords North End which is largely African American and West Indian...I approached some church and community leaders to establish such a committee, and then this committee developed an action plan...this plan included holding tutor training workshops in several Black churches over the next year or so and then establishing programming from there... once this got up and running, we got a grant to do some "family literacy" work, which we interpreted to mean providing literacy to parents, though this quickly expanded to include other community residents (everyone has a family...why be exclusive to parents?)...when we got kicked out of the church that we were holding classes in by the fire marshals (it was a fire trap), we found space in the Caribbean Club, a local social club (one of our student's father was the treasurer of the club at that point)... from there, our community programming just kept expanding, with a lot of the work being grant driven...because of the organizational belief in this neighborhood based work, we looked for grants to helps establish particular projects...we had a grant for four years to do some work in a public housing project...we had a two year grant to work with a parent's organizing project (we trained-and paid- parent leaders to teach ESOL to other parents)... when these grants ran out, though, it was hard to continue the programs... in recent years, as LVGH was pretty well known in the city for our community programming, we began getting approached by a lot of different agencies and organizations...a senior center called us...a brand new agency called Asian Family Services called us...a number of Family Resource Centers called us...a health clinic called us...most of the time, though, it was an individual or two within the organization that saw the need...getting a deeper level of organizational understanding in cases like this is tough... because we couldn't respond reasonably to all of these requests to "set up" programs, we wrote and received a 3 year grant to establish, in a formal sense, the "Community Literacy Initiative" that George has described...now it's his baby...and it's tough (but extremely important) work... George posed a really good question...how does one get an organization to really internalize this work into their agenda...and if/when it does happen, what does that mean for the organizations continued relationship to you? I look forward to other thoughts on this...and as a lurker, I'm enjoying the discussions on this list in general! Steve Bender 1199 Training and Upgrading Fund New England Health Care Employees Union
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