Greetings from the Newberry County Literacy Council. Summer is just around the corner and some of our programs are winding down in order to take a summer break.
VITA, our free tax service, ended on April 15 and the People’s College and the Weekly Reader Book Club are wrapping up their final weeks. The Saturday Academy at Newberry Elementary School has two more sessions. So, this is a time to look back and to look ahead. How do we evaluate this past year and what are our hopes for next year? What we see at the Literacy Council is similar, I’m sure, to what other non-profits experience. We offer services designed to boost individual skills and opportunities or to enable individuals to get help they may not be able to pay for. For example, we tutor an adult so that he can read the newspaper or labels on food cans. We help another with the math she needs to know to pass her GED and hopefully qualify for a better job. We assist another with preparation of a tax return at no cost. We help parents shepherd their children through the early years of their schooling. Over the year we have served many people. We appreciate and celebrate all the services we and other non-profits provide. Yet, at the end of the day or the year, we know that tomorrow and next year, people will continue to come to us with these same needs, driven by the same factors. We know the poverty and racial disparities that make the existence of non-profits necessary do not change much from year to year. We may help some climb out of poverty but others fill their place. Though some would say this is a pessimistic or cynical point of view, it is not. It is a realistic view of a hard truth: problems such as poverty, racial disparities, and access to good education and health care are not solved at the individual level which is where most non-profits operate. These problems are attacked at the level of political policy and institutional change. For example, making good health care available to all cannot be achieved by local non-profits; free medical clinics provide a wonderful service but can reach only a fraction of those who need care. It takes political action to create programs that address health care for all. Over the years, Congress has created the Medicare and Medicaid programs to address health care for seniors and for children but millions of others still do not have this access. That is why health care will be a major issue in the next presidential election. Providing people with quality education is also a policy matter. What is the proper curriculum, how much testing should we do, how much are teachers paid, are we attracting the best and brightest to the teaching profession, do all schools regardless of whether they are in rural or urban areas or in Lexington County or Colleton County have adequate funding? These are questions addressed in the halls of power in Columbia, affected by policy at the national level. At this point we know that educational opportunity is not spread equally across all strata of society and thus there will be large disparities in educational success across class and racial groups. Non-profits step in to do what they can but solutions come through the political process where comprehensive programs are created and funding is provided. That is why the Literacy Council promotes the idea of literacy for citizenship. Government is of, by, and for the people and thus everybody needs to be involved in the important policy decisions.
Between the individual level of assistance provided by non-profits and the institutional level of policy centered in Washington and state capitals is an intermediate level of action. These are often coalitions of groups and programs that attempt to provide more comprehensive services for those in need with the hope that this will lead to institutional change. In Newberry, for example, the Literacy Council convened such a group in 2017. Representatives from different non-profits and action groups supplemented with concerned individuals have been meeting at lunch time on Wednesday – hence we have called ourselves the Brown Bag Group – to discuss actions we can take to provide a higher level of service to people in need, to reach more people, and to make services more comprehensive. We have talked a lot about the old Gallman High School which will soon be vacated as Adult Education, First Steps, and the Bright Beginnings Day Care move to the renovated Food Lion store, on Kendall Road. Could the school become a community center with a variety of programming and services under one roof? Our group has had discussions with the school district and hosted focus group meetings with people in the Gallman neighborhood. Some of the members of our group attended the old Gallman High and will be presenting our ideas for the school at the Gallman reunion in late May. Our community has much to offer – fine restaurants and shopping, a great selection of performing and visual arts, a bustling and attractive downtown. We have many fine citizens and groups working for a better Newberry as we move forward. We need to make sure everybody is included in our vision for the future.
Until next time, happy reading!