MIDLAND The Literacy Coalition of the Permian Basin may not have been around very long, but it’s starting to get noticed not just locally but world wide.
John Trischitti III, executive director, recently took a trip to England to present at the World Literacy Summit. The conference is usually held every other year, but they hadn’t had one since COVID.
He added that the conference had always been on his radar even when he was director of the Midland County libraries. But it was hard to justify that kind of travel working for a government entity.
His board saw the value of going for the Literacy Coalition; there were a lot of networking opportunities; and it was an opportunity to raise the profile of the organization.
“I think the recurring theme that I gathered was that awareness of the severity of the issue is still a problem. We get so kind of trapped in our little bubbles that we think well everyone that we know and are talking to is aware of it, but that’s still a pretty small pool a lot of times, so what you can do or what are creative things that you can do to really raise awareness outside of the usual suspects of education, adult education, junior college; those kinds of things; much more community, every day, average Joe kind of awareness. Then really can just kind of re-emphasize the need for both addressing literacy at the adult level where people have gotten to adulthood and don’t have the necessary literacy skills to maximize their potential in life,” he said.
Some people have difficulty reading, they can’t read road signs, understand their child’s prescriptions or pass a CDL test.
“They’re getting by. They’re gainfully employed, and they’re maybe putting food on the table. But they’ve hit a glass ceiling when it comes to job promotion, because they just don’t have the literacy skills to do that supervisory function, or to do that very technical function. But at the same time, you’re addressing the adult piece to address the kindergarten readiness piece; the family literacy piece. Because those are the people that end up growing into adults that struggle with that because they start school behind. Once you get behind, it can be very difficult to catch up,” he added.
He noted that people are more prone to drop out of school, or have additional academic issues.
There are different ways to go after the literacy issue, even in the Permian Basin. Trischitti said the approach is different in Roswell, N.M., than Ozona or Fort Stockton because the problems, demographics and socio-economics to those places may be unique.
“Unfortunately, there’s not a cookie cutter solution for literacy or someone would have fixed it a long, long time ago,” Trischitti said.
He added that they recently had a board retreat talking about what the first two years of the organization have looked like.
“… (We’ve) got a lot of places to improve and places we want to continue to work. But one of the places we feel like we have made some ground is in the awareness space. We’re starting to hear it be much more of a conversation when people talk about workforce development, or whatever that may be that literacy is now a part of that conversation that it’s not so siloed in just the education space. We went to a program that another organization was putting on, but they were using our data. That’s always encouraging. … People know that the needs assessment is there and it’s specific to our region, which I think makes it more applicable, which hadn’t been there before. It’s available on the website for everyone. It’s not a thing that we’re trying to upcharge folks for. We want people to use it because we feel like if awareness is getting out there, then that’s when communities decide that, hey, this is an issue that we want to try to tackle,” Trishchitti said.
People have it in their minds that literacy is an education issue, but it’s a community issue.
“Until we decide as communities that it’s a problem, we’re never really going to make substantive change,” Trischitti said.
Economist Ray Perryman has said for every $1 invested in education, it yields $56.76.
Trischitti said if you can show someone how an issue affects their pocketbook or their lives, they may be more receptive to that conversation.
“But if they feel that they’re at a place in life where that’s just not something that they need, then there’s nothing you can really do about that. You’re always going to have naysayers or eyesores that are always seeing it a little more negative and feel like well … it’s fine,” Trischitti said.
The coalition is taking over the POWER Bag program from the Education Partnership of the Permian Basin. POWER stands for Power of Words and Early Reading and is a project to promote early literacy.
“We’re launching that under our umbrella … It’s an established program that has been successful and we feel like has really good bones on it. We have some ideas (on what) we want to do. We’re going to expand it. We’ve gotten a commitment from the Fort Stockton Hospital in Pecos County. We’re going to grow out there and Hobbs in Lea County as well as also coming on board this year. And then changing some of the content of the bag, so we’re excited about that,” Trischitti said.
He added that they are launching the Laura Bush Ladies for Literacy Initiative, which is being modeled after the Barbara Bush Literacy Foundation in Houston. They have a Barbara Bush Ladies for Literacy guild. “We really like the work that they’re doing down there,” he said.
“They’re probably who we want to be when we grow up. They’ve been around for 20 or 25 years and so (they) really have some great results,” Trischitti said.
They contacted Bush’s office to see if she would let them use her name and likeness and she was very gracious to allow them to do that, he added.
“The sub grant program was very popular last year and we’re currently raising money to refill those coffers. The application window for that will open this summer for distribution this fall. We had several Ector County recipients last year. We had Fort Stockton,” Trischitti said.
They are also having quarterly convenings for members, trying to provide some continuing education and support to the territory the Literacy Coalition covers is help them to build capacity.
