Advocacy, Outreach and Collaboration

Individual Paper/Presentation

The American Dream Adult Literacy Initiative: A Retrospective

Primary Author(s)

• MD

  Mary Davis Fournier, MEd

  Deputy Director
  ALA Public Programs Office

The American Dream Adult Literacy Initiative is a grant that serves adult English Language Learners. The grant was launched in 2007 by the American Library Association. In 2017, a retrospective evaluation of this program was commissioned. The American Library Association's Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services receive funding from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation to administer this grant.
This session will provide an overview of the results of this evaluation and share resources and best practices learned over the course of 10 years. Literacy as a social justice issues mean that all people have access to the skills and resources they need to communicate, analyze, criticize, synthesize, and create information.

 

Learning Objectives:

• Define literacy as a social justice initiative.
• Integrate best practices identified in the retrospective evaluation.
• Articulate the need for family literacy programming to increase success of adult literacy programming.