Literacy and

Community Action

San Rafael, California

July 13^th 2000

Background

In 1998 a request from Laura Cardenas Gonzalez’s 10 year old son prompted her to become the first student in the only Spanish literacy program in Marin County, one of the most affluent counties in the nation.

The literacy project (Programa Comunitario de Alfabetización), an East San Rafael grassroots-based program, is designed for an audience that is primary defined as first generation immigrant. Their primary language is Spanish; in most cases, participants are monolingual.

Even though the majority of the participants are residents of the Canal Neighborhood, the project serves people from several other areas of the county.

The Canal Neighborhood is a community of aproximately 8,000 to 10,000 residents from over 30 countries around the world. Although Latinos make up 47% (according to the 1990 census)of that total, they comprise a full 74.41% of the young adult population.

In 1990, there were 636 households in the Canal Neighborhood that were considered "linguistically isolated"; Spanish speakers made up 63.2% of those households.

The literacy program is in part a response to this isolation. It also represents an effort to correct the imbalance of resources and limited availability of opportunities to so many of the Latinos living in this community.

The project has been in place for about two years. Since the beginning, volunteers were a very essential part of the philosophy of the program. The main goal has been to develop civic engagement in the Latino community by forming a group that will act on their own behalf regardless of the social and economic differences. It is very accurate to say that the goal has been achieved in that aspect.

Even though the program is very successful, another set of challenges has emerged. The first challenge has been to move participants from a point of reflection to a more pro-active place. The second challenge, especially for the director, has been the development of leadership. According to the volunteers’ evaluation, they indeed have observed a transformation in attitude and the critical thinking skills of the students, as well as a greater willingness to more committed engagement to fostering the well-being of the whole community. [The volunteers have also requested training which brings us to another one of the objectives/challenges we need to fulfil.]

The lack of sufficient training and funding is a reality that we are trying to address through different avenues. First, the Centro Cultural Mexicano provides the books that [INEA] designed for adult education. However, we also need access to consistent training and follow up for the volunteers. Additionally, we need to access training support that acknowledges the Literacy Project as a tool for incorporating social justice that is so needed in our community.

In order to address our funding issues, we are in the process of hiring a grantwriter. This process of securing a more institutionalized base of resources will change the way the literacy program functions, because we will be able to bring a paid staffperson on board. That, in turn, will allow us to extend the reach and impact in the community.