This gathering is the first Annual Meeting of Literacy Volunteers on the Green. It is an opportunity for us to thank all of the volunteers, donors and other friends who have helped us during 2009, and to report on our activities in this period.

Our Executive Director Anne Maitland will give you details on the following a bit later, but here are some of the highlights of our year:

• We helped close to 200 newcomers to our region learn to speak, read and write English.
• In two intensive three-day sessions, we trained some 30 volunteers to become tutors in English as a Second Language, bringing the total number we have trained to 161 in our four years of existence.
• The FamilyRead organization lost major funding for its program but we are seeking alternative ways to continue to help residents in our area to begin to experience the joys of reading as families for the first time.
• In partnership with the Kent Center and John Pettibone schools we are helping about 25 moms and dads to learn English and communicate with their children’s teachers.
• We received our 501 [c] (3) designation from the Internal Revenue Service, enabling us to begin the process of taking full fiscal responsibility for our operations.
• LVG received welcome grants and donations from the United Way of Western Connecticut, the Kent Lions Club, Medinstill, Kent Fabrics, Infinity Wealth Management, the Cecilia Buck Taylor Law firm, Town of Kent. Lilla Fund, Quality Thrift Shop in Kent, Women’s Club of Danbury-New Fairfield, the Dyson Foundation, Rotary Club of New Milford, Walmart Foundation, St. Francis Xavier Church, First Congregational Church in New Milford, Fr. Berberich at Sacred Heart Church in Kent. Previous grants from Union Savings Bank are still being gratefully utilized, including for our Student-Tutor Recognition evenings.
• We held wonderful events to honor our students and our tutors, including evenings in Kent and New Milford that paid significant dividends in community good will.
• We strengthened our Board of Directors, adding important new members including Bob McDermott, Margaret Weiner, David Bain, Wendy Carlson, Josephine Dill. We now have a 12-person board, representing a diverse cross section of Litchfield County.
• We engaged Priscilla Mancione as our Program Coordinator.
• Honoring Anne’s wish to leave the position of Executive Director by the end of 2009, we conducted a thorough search for a successor and have engaged Jacqueline Farrell to be Executive Director starting Jan. 1, 2009.
• Although we did not have a major fund raising event in 2009, we did a Fall solicitation by mail that so far has raised nearly $10,000. Our next fund raising dinner and silent auction will be held April 30^th.

After working thousands of hours on our behalf over the past six years without compensation of any kind, Anne Maitland has decided to stop down as our Executive Director at the end of this year. LVG has been truly blessed to have had the leadership of two amazing co-founders, Rita Gauriglia and Anne Maitland. While Rita still provides significant support and service to our organization, it is Anne who has carried the majority of the weight these past few years. Deciding how to move forward without Anne at the helm has been enormously important. Our Board concluded that we would hire a part-time Executive Director and made the decision to raise the necessary funds to compensate the new person.  We advertised the position locally and received more than 30 resumes, which our Search Committee narrowed down to about half a dozen people who were on our short list. We then brought in the final two for interviews, and between these two we eventually decided on Jacqueline Farrell, well known in the area for her educational and academic skills.

Jacqui Farrell, with the guidance of Anne Maitland and others in the LVG family, will help us to continue our tremendously important work.  A dozen of our students have gone on to become U.S. Citizens. Others have started their own businesses or obtained wonderful jobs in our communities. Others are able to talk to their kids’ teachers for the first time, explain their symptoms clearly to a doctor, carry on a neighborly conversation at the supermarket…and have all the normal communication the rest of us take for granted because we learned our language as children.  For all of the work you do on behalf of LVG, our Board is thankful.

We are most thankful for one person in particular, and I want to make sure we let her know how grateful we are for her service, her friendship, her guidance and her inspiration. Anne, this is just a token. But it’s an emblem of how much we honor you and appreciate all that you’ve done for us.

Before we move on to the rest of our agenda today I want to advise the Board and others that I plan to step down from the office of President at the end of 2010. I’ve done the job for three years and I think LVG will benefit from fresh, new blood in the top board office. I hope to work with the Board to find my successor and then with that person to assure an orderly transition.  I’d like to continue to be active with LVG, just not as the Board president.

Thank you,
Allan Priaulx

New West Main
8 Holly Place
Lakeville, CT
Open for lunch and dinner 7 days
860-596-0505

Please join us in celebrating this wonderful accomplishments and in sending our best wishes for continued success!

The purpose of this meeting will be to review the organization’s activities for the past year; elect directors and officers for the next year; and to conduct other business as may be properly brought before the meeting.

During the first three years of its existence LVG operated under the aegis of United Way of Western Connecticut , but after receiving designation as a 501 [c] (3) corporation by the Internal Revenue Service in 2008 it now operates independently.

Contact:  Allan Priaulx, 800-762-4763

At the review session I attended, another tutor noted that she used a bingo game for review of vocabulary. She created her own cards with Excel. I found a site on line that made this process so simple and my students enjoyed bingo as a means of reviewing vocabulary.

http://teachers.teach-nology.com/web_tools/materials/bingo/

Click on the 5×5 card at the bottom of the page. You can type in your vocabulary in the spaces and then click and the words are shuffled for you. This can be repeated, so even if you have many students it will work. How easy is that!

Barbara Leahey

In a previous post, we linked you to a site devoted specifically to this issue. We’re now going to explore some other sites discussed at a recent workshop.

In this article from the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy you will get the opportunity to follow an ESL tutor, Kate Singleton, in her journey to fill the gap between health related curricula and real life experiences. As a result of her work, you can also find a rich web page full of her health related picture stories that can be used right away in your classes.

Variety is also the spice of life and the following web site gives you that in spades – as long as you are looking to spice up your health literacy curricula. Health Roads Media has lessons in 20 categories including medical tests, dental, nutrition, and staying healthy. The lessons are offered in 5 ways: pictures, sound, written, web page video, and mobile video for the iPod. The materials are also available in an astonishing 20 languages!

If you are looking for brochures, we have the site for you. The 24 Languages Project, a project of the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, has over 200 health education brochures in 24 languages.

Another robust site you can visit is called “Family Health and Literacy” which is described as “a guide to easy-to-read health education materials and web sites for families.” Not only does this site have easy-to-read materials but it also has information on how to get started and links to further curricula. If you like the content on the site, you can order a copy in printed form.

If you have found other great sites on health literacy, please post a comment here and we’ll feature them in an upcoming post.

Social
Projects include:

• cookbooks
• ‘my story’ books
• painted plates that depict a homeland
• poetry
• flags from many nations
• biographies of famous people who live in student’s native country
• a class newspaper
• a reader’s digest type newsletter that includes jokes, recipes, poetry, how to make things, etc.

Community
Projects include:

• recycling
• service to the community (volunteerism)
• developing a ‘business directory’ of places that students frequent
• a visit to the state capital and meeting state legislators and a tour of the capital bldg
• baby showers
• a blog developed by an esl teacher for student/teacher interaction
• a scavenger hunt around town to discover bldgs, parks, stores, services, etc.
• going to plays at the bushnell and ivoryton theaters
• a breakfast that one class had for other classes and civic groups

Local Resources

Connecticut has its own informational flu site at CTFLUWATCH with information in the following languages besides English: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. For information via the telephone, the H1N1 Influenza Hotline is 1-800-830-9426. You can also encourage your students living in CT to dial 211 for information.

Beyond the Flu

Another national site with information on the H1N1 influenza is the Centers for Disease Control  which is available in Spanish and a number of other languages. There is also a Family Health page which deals with a variety of issues beyond the flu, such as safety during holidays like Halloween, and has material written in a style for children.

Using Google News Alerts

To keep up to date on the flu, you can also setup a news alert on Google that can email you a digest of new articles once a day. Simply go the alerts page from Google and fill out the simple form on the right.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Six to Nine P.M.
St. John’s Episcopal Church Hall
7 Whittlesey Avenue
New Milford

See the invitation below. Please print it and share it with your students. It may be useful to use mapquest to print a map for your students.

This will be a casual supper get together where there will be time to get to know other tutors and students. We do hope you will come and encourage your students to come as well.

Please email josephinedill@aol.com with any questions or comments.

Thanksgiving Fiesta Invitation (WORD) (11/2009)

http://www.newstimes.com/search/ci_13679157?IADID=Search-www.newstimes.com-www.newstimes.com

It will air: Nov. 15 at 4pm, Nov. 17 at 8pm, Nov. 22 at pm, and Nov. 24 at 8pm.