Letter: Literacy impacts full community

Please join The Literacy Center (formerly Literacy Volunteers of the Lowcountry) in celebrating International Literacy Day, which was commemorated on Thursday.

It helps bring our attention to the nearly 800 million adults worldwide who cannot read, write, or perform simple math calculations. This is a time to renew efforts to promote literacy and a commitment to providing education for all.

In Beaufort County, 11,000 adults, 11 percent of our population, lack the literacy skills they need to get better jobs, help their children with homework, or participate fully in our community. In Jasper County, 27 percent lack those skills and 24 percent in Hampton County.

The Literacy Center’s mission is to strengthen literacy in Beaufort County by providing people with the reading, writing, math and speaking skills to be successful in the community, workplace and family. We are proud to be Beaufort County’s only nonprofit adult and family literacy organization, serving more than 600 students a year at eight sites.

The trickle-down effect literacy education has on our community is huge. Our students reported being responsible for 1,300 dependent children or aging parents.

We recruit and train volunteers to work with adults and families one-to-one or in small groups to help them reach their educational goals. This past year we had almost 100 volunteer tutors, some who have been serving TLC for almost 20 years.

The Literacy Center continues to meet a serious need in Beaufort County. Literacy impacts all of us.

This story was originally published September 7, 2016 at 1:30 PM with the headline "Letter: Literacy impacts full community."