news-record.com

EDEN — An effort to teach reading to adults in Rockingham County has always been on the lookout for volunteers.

But with mills closing and unemployment high, the need has gone from serious to dire.

More than 50 people are on the waiting list for help from the Rockingham County Literacy Project .

“If there’s one person on the waiting list, that’s too many,” said Jean Light Kinyon , the group’s executive director. “We don’t have the tutors to serve them.”

The need was already strong. Nearly a third of Rockingham County residents 25 and older didn’t graduate from high school and don’t have a GED . Some 60 percent of those 16 and older have literacy skills on one of the lowest two levels as measured by the National Adult Literacy Survey, Kinyon said.

“Before I got the job, I didn’t know we had such a problem,” she said.

And as the economy has soured, the number of people looking for help has soared. Thirty-three people worked on learning to read two years ago. Forty-one the year after that. Sixty-eight last year .

And it’s increasing again this year.

Many are out of work or fear they soon might be unemployed, and they may not have the skills they need to make a living.

Many dropped out of school
decades ago to work on a farm or in the mill. They or their families needed to make a living. Now, the mills are dropping out on them. Education might have seemed like a luxury. Now, with factory jobs vanishing, it seems a necessity.

And some simply want to read for the sake of reading — to be able to read to grandchildren or to read the Bible.

“I just retired. I don’t want my brain to die,” one retiree told Kinyon.

Those looking to make a better life pack the small Washington Street storefront. There, they sit at small folding tables topped with coffee cups holding pens and pencils and learn, word by sometimes painful word, how to read.

Colorful paintings adorn the walls, and the bookshelves are packed with encyclopedias, GED guides, religious stories.

On some days, it’s almost a little schoolhouse.

“We have people at all the tables,” Kinyon said. “It gets a little crazy in here sometimes.”

They include people such as Jeanine Bowers , who works at Walmart but decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to improve her reading skills.

She’s happy with the progress she’s made since working with a tutor three hours a week.

“I have improved a great deal,” said Bowers, who lives in Eden. “She’s a wonderful tutor.”

But the number of tutors hasn’t kept pace with the demand.

In an effort to tackle the waiting list, the center has gone from strictly one-on-one tutoring to creating some small groups of up to four students.

But that still leaves dozens on the list — and some simply give up, Kinyon said. “We really need tutors,” she said.

The work is strictly volunteer. There is no money to pay volunteers, Kinyon said.

But there are other rewards.

“They really get something out of it,” she said. “If you can make a difference in somebody’s life, you’ve really done something.”

The work involves a time commitment of just two or three hours a week, Kinyon said.

“A lot of the people who tutor really are busy people,” she said. “A lot of the people who have time don’t step forward.”

But tutor-recruiting efforts are ongoing, with training sessions coming up in October.

And there is always the possibility that some current students might switch to the other side of the table.

Maybe some time down the road, Bowers said, she’ll give tutoring a try.

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or at jason.hardin@news-record.com