Hawaii Literacy Celebrates 50 years!

Building on 50 Years of Access and Opportunity

OUR IMPACT

For the past 50 years, Hawaii Literacy has worked with communities disproportionately affected by high illiteracy and poverty and helped to improve their reading, writing, school, and life skills, and build the foundation for a better life.

Hawaii Literacy has helped 40,000 adults and youth build their reading and writing skills with the goal of ending generational cycles of poverty and under-education and helping our communities to thrive with our five programs across three Hawaiian islands.

Filling a Need

Hawaii Literacy works to close the gap:

1 in 6 adults has a significant challenge reading and writing, which impacts every aspect of their lives and closely relates to increasing poverty, adverse health outcomes, and government dependence, in addition to having an impact on future generations.
50% of children from low-income communities can be up to two years behind their peers when entering first grade.
Youth need literacy skills early – the gap greatly progresses between second and sixth grade and accounts for upwards of 80% of the achievement difference.

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Focused on the Future

Foundational digital literacy is as essential as basic literacy. The pandemic highlighted the importance of digital literacy skills and underscored the gulf between people who can leverage technology and those that can’t – it’s an equity issue. Access to technology and the opportunity to develop digital skills are critical for adults and to the academic success of students.

To address this issue, Hawaii Literacy is joining the Workforce Resiliency Initiative to reach the goal of connecting 100,000 people to opportunities to develop digital skills. The addition of this partnership to existing programs will help the 1 in 6 adults to reach a basic level of digital and traditional literacy to ensure they can participate in the initiative. We’ve created a digital literacy model to focus on connectivity, culturally informed digital skills training, and access to technology that can be scaled to public housing sites and other organizations that serve low literacy adults. Classes will begin this fall, in honor of our 50th anniversary (dependent on the COVID-19 numbers and current health & safety guidelines).

How You Can Help

To celebrate its 50th year anniversary, we are asking you to invest in Hawaii Literacy and join us in promoting literacy for all, through our programs: Family Literacy Libraries, English Language Learner, Bookmobile, Parents Achieving Literacy, and Adult Literacy, including the new digital literacy initiative.

Mahalo for your support and for helping us to empower and build better lives!

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