Become a literacy tutor in Essex County

MAPLEWOOD, NJ — Literacy Volunteers of America is always seeking volunteer literacy tutors and will hold an 18-hour tutor training course at Maplewood Memorial Library’s Hilton Branch, 1688 Springfield Ave. in Maplewood, from 9 a.m. to noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Oct. 15, 17, 22, 25, 29 and 31.

Life is limited when you can’t read medical label warnings, correspondence from your child’s teacher, instructions on a new appliance, a job application, a street sign, directions or a driver’s license application. Yet many adults find themselves in exactly that position, particularly in Essex County, where one in every four adults is considered functionally illiterate in English, according to U.S. Department of Education data.

When you help an adult, you help their entire family. Literacy Volunteers of America in Essex and Passaic counties has a long list of U.S. citizens and immigrants, among them refugees and asylum seekers, waiting for help in learning to speak, understand, read and write in English. 

Volunteers work once per week for two hours or more and earn a certificate as tutors of basic literacy and English for speakers of other languages from Literacy Volunteers of America, one of the largest nonprofit adult-literacy organizations in the country. 

For more information, contact LVA at 973-566-6200, ext. 217, via email at [email protected] or register through the website www.lvaep.org.

  Literacy Volunteers of America, Maplewood Library