November is National Family Literacy Month. To celebrate, we’re connecting you to the people, places and events focusing on literacy in Savannah.
LISTEN
107.5 FM (WRUU) Listening to Literature
In 2017, Leigh Rich started the Listening to Literature hour on 107.5 FM (WRUU) as a way to interview local and state authors about their work. Rich now shares the segment with two co-hosts, P.T. Bridgeport and Carol Andrew, every Friday.
“I want listeners to discover new works or new authors that they have never read before or re-discover works and authors that they do know, but are seen in a different light,” Rich said. Writers of short stories, books and poetry have been invited to the show to explore the written word both past and present.
As technology continues to develop, Rich believes it could also be an opportunity to engage new readers. “I do think that modern technologies or more modern technologies, whether it’s, radio or TV or film, or even sometimes social media…can encourage us to increase our literacy and go back to good writing and the written word.”
Listening to Literature airs every Friday at 12:05pm to 1:00pm and can also be streamed online. Visit https://www.wruu.org/shows/listening-to-literature/ to learn more.
WATCH
Seersucker Live
Christopher Berinato founded Seersucker Live in 2010 with his friend, Zach Powers. As a literary arts non-profit, they feature national, regional, and local writers through entertaining reading performances.
Their shows are meant to entertain and engage audiences. “We’re trying to do something that’s a little more rambunctious and fun.” Berinato said. We keep it fast, we keep it funny. We have music, we have audience participation.” Diverse guests keep the shows, performed twice a year, fresh and interesting.
November’s upcoming show will be the first in the non-profits history to feature all women writers including Halle Hill, Jazmine Faries, and Danèlle Lejeune. “As someone who likes literature, I think it’s a great way to share some of our favorite writers with other people. And it’s also a great way to meet the writers that we respect and enjoy reading,” Berinato said.
Seersucker Live will present “The Homecoming Episode” on Nov. 9 at Front Porch Improv. For more information and tickets, visit frontporchimprov.com.
VOLUNTEER
Loop it Up Savannah
Literacy is woven into everything that Loop it Up Savannah does. Specifically, Looping Literacy Together (LLT) is an arts integrated literacy program that helps pre-K through first grade students become more comfortable with reading, comprehension, vocabulary, and communication. In 2019, at the request of Selina Gillans, the principal at Otis J. Brock, III Elementary School, Looping Literacy Together created classroom curriculum and programming. “We started building this program with her initially as a way to bring community members into the schools to read with the students, to have conversations, and so on,” said Molly Lieberman, the executive director of Loop in Up Savannah.
The intent was to support students who came to school with a variety of skill sets due to diverse early learning experiences. They now work with 50 classrooms in the Savannah Chatham County School District.
A part of the programming includes The Book Box Library project, which gives kindergarten students the chance to paint a wooden crate that they take home as a personal library. It takes about 300 books per classroom to fill the book boxes. Volunteers, Liebeman said, are always needed for the Book Box project and book collections. ”We often talk about the power of one hour, if you’re able to designate one hour a week, a month and regularly come in and work with the students, that is just an incredibly impactful thing you can do,” she said.
Lieberman enjoys giving students engaging, hands-on activities that spark conversations around reading comprehension. “Seeing that engagement grow over time has been incredibly rewarding and knowing that we are contributing to the overall language rich environment that our young people live in and the overall literacy efforts in our school districts and in this community as a whole.”
For more information about Loop It Up Savannah and their programming, visit: https://www.loopitupsavannah.com/programs
ENGAGE
The Deep Center
Deep Center is a local nonprofit that empowers young people to use their creativity to connect their learning to their lives through writing, art and culture. The organization has several initiatives and programs through which they engage in this work, but one of their initiatives is to promote literacy, and specifically, critical literacy among the students they serve.
“Critical literacy is more about the ability to connect ideas with each other,” said Anthonella Alvarez, the Deep Center’s program manager.
Alvarez leads the center’s Young Author Project, which offers after-school workshops to middle and high school students focused on creative writing and critical literacy.
“We present ideas in the workshop, and by the end of the program, the participants are able to connect those ideas with ideas outside of the classroom,” she explained. “It’s really important because a lot of our young people sometimes don’t have the opportunity to express those bigger ideas in a way that is creative and substantial to them. It’s super important for them to be able to connect what they’re learning in the classroom and beyond with the bigger world . . . to be able to thrive as learners and creatives.”
Anyone interested in supporting the Deep Center in their mission to help Savannah’s youth thrive as learners and leaders can do so by making donations or volunteering with their programs. Visit deepcenter.org to learn more.
SUPPORT
Future Minds Adult Literacy and Education, Inc.
For the last 14 years, Future Minds Adult Literacy and Education has been helping local adults without a high school diploma or GED to obtain their GED. The organization’s founder, Zelonia Williams, started her program as a way to remove the typical barriers adults face when trying to earn their GED.
“[Future Minds] is a program that does not have all the red tape such as attendance or not being able to pay for the test. My program allows individuals to miss a certain amount of days and in the case where they aren’t able to pay for the exam, my program provides scholarships to pay for all components of the test,” she said, having helped more than 100 people earn their GEDs through the years.
In addition to her literacy work with Future Minds, Williams serves on Mayor Johnson’s Read Savannah Taskforce, which was formed in 2020 as a part of his ongoing effort to promote literacy in Savannah.
“The taskforce is put in place to increase the literacy rate here in Savannah, and our mission is to bring ideas, policies and anything under the umbrella of education on one accord. We have found that in Savannah, we were working in silos oftentimes [when] we’re all working towards the same thing,” said Williams.
The taskforce works to unite various organizations and foster collaboration in the pursuit of local literacy goals. For Williams, promoting literacy is about increasing comprehension.
“We sometimes drop the ball because we just place a book in a child’s hands with the expectation that they’re able to read it. What I have found is that an illiterate child becomes an illiterate adult, and having that book in their hand doesn’t necessarily mean that they understand what they’re reading,” she said.
Williams has seen the correlations between literacy and things like workplace advancement, poverty and crime, and is a firm believer that literacy leads to better outcomes for individuals and the communities in which they live.
Anyone looking to support her work with Future Minds can do so by attending the various fundraising events the organization has coming up.
“We have literacy night for literacy week. We also have Smarter Than a Fifth Grader. We have our Little Black Dress event. We have our fashion shows,” she said.
Funds generated from these events will help those unable to cover costs for their GED test, books or practice exams. Williams also encourages the public to connect people without their high school diploma or GED to the resources available to them, “so that they are able to make the necessary changes in their life, impact their lives in a positive way and be a more productive citizen.”
DONATE
Book Nation of Dreamers
It started as a simple book drive. About three years ago, Dream Smith wanted to do something good for Savannah– the community she calls home. It turned into Book Nation of Dreamers, a non-profit to help support literacy. “We are all about literacy because if you can read, you can do anything,” Smith said.
For Smith, reading has always been a gateway to opportunities, one she wants to share with students and parents alike. “Wherever you find illiteracy, normally it’s generational and so we have a holistic approach where we try to make sure the parents are involved.”
Currently, Smith has eight lending libraries around the city and encourages the community to help fill them.
For more information, visit https://www.booknationofdreamers.com
LEAD
United Way of the Coastal Empire
When it comes to improving early language and literacy, United Way of the Coastal Empire provides year-round support to children in Bryan, Chatham, Effingham, and Liberty counties through Read United.
Cheri Dean, Vice President of Direct Services and Impact for United Way of the Coastal Empire, said one of United Way’s overall objectives is helping individuals move toward a path of upward mobility and literacy plays big part. “One of our bold goals to that end is a ready and resilient workforce, and we see our early childhood literacy initiatives being a key component of building a ready and resilient workforce starting at age zero,” Dean said.
One of Read United’s hallmark initiatives is Read United Day, a program that started in Liberty County 16 years ago and expanded to Chatham county last year. On this day, United Way volunteers read to classrooms and give books to every student in pre-k through second grade. “That’s really important because we know that over sixty percent of low income homes do not have a home library or just a bookshelf with books that kids can go to and read whenever they want and read independently,” Dean said. Chatham County’s Read United Day will be on Feb. 2, 2024 and in Bryan, Effingham and Liberty Counties, it will be on Jan. 26, 2024.
In partnership with The Rotary Club of Savannah and the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System, Read United Buddies is a pilot mentorship program that started in October. The program pairs volunteers with second grade students to read with them twice a week for 30 minutes throughout the entire school year. “We’re going to stick with those students to the fourth grade so that we can have sustained outcomes as far as improving their reading proficiency,” Dean said, who hopes to expand the progam next year.
United Way also has partnerships to advance early language and literacy including Share The Magic Foundation Reading Rallies and Virtual Reading Challenges, as well as an initiative through a special award United Way received in September–the Language as a Missing Link and Missed Opportunity Champion Award. The award from the Sandra Dunagan Deal Center for Early Language and Literacy, brings with it a framework on how to notice, monitor, screen, and enhance language and literacy skills in children from birth to age eight.
Dean said they are now working to implement the tools they have learned from the Deal Center by working with a Collective Impact Coalition. “There’s several nonprofits that are part of that collective impact framework. United Way is the backbone, but also Coastal Georgia Indicators Coalition, Live Oak Public Library, Georgia Tech, Greenbriar Children’s Center, there’s about fifteen nonprofit organizations that are working together.” It takes a community, Dean said, working with parents, schools and organizations to advance early childhood literacy.
For more information, visit uwce.org/read-united/. To learn more about early childhood literacy programs, visit getgeorgiareading.org.
This article appears in Connect Savannah | November, 2023.
