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 Community Type Small city and surrounding county; population of approximately 240,000. Geographic Region Southeast OverviewThe Durham Literacy Center is a community-based volunteer organization offering literacy services to adults, youth, and families on-site, as well as in neighborhood centers, nursing homes, welfare-to-work programs, shelters, residential treatment centers, and correctional facilities. Services are free or low-cost to clients, a result of the work of the volunteers who provide 90 percent of the Center’s direct services and the Center’s diverse funding base, consisting of federal and local resources, individual and business donations, foundation grants, fund-raising sales and events, and fee-for-service contracts with social service providers. In addition to direct funding, the Literacy Center benefits from gifts of equipment, software, books, professional services, materials, supplies, and in-kind staffing from local corporations, universities, and churches. As part of its partnership strategy, the Center shares many of these resources with other agencies with similar missions.  Partnership Highlights To meet the varied needs of its clients, the Literacy Center has a long history of partnerships with local government agencies, faith- and community-based organizations, education institutions, and businesses. A recent partnership combined the forces of four organizations—IBM, Kestrel Heights School, Duke University, and the Literacy Center. The partnership began when IBM asked the Literacy Center to serve as a pilot site for the company's Reading Recognition Software—a computer software program designed to provide reading practice and support to English language learners. As a pilot site, the Literacy Center received software, 40 computers, and free technical support from IBM. In return, the Center supplied IBM with feedback on the reading program. As a result of the positive feedback from the Literacy Center and the seven other pilot sites, IBM launched a $1.5 million grant initiative to provide the software and IBM technology to more than 100 literacy organizations nationwide. The IBM pilot project came about in part because the Center is a United Way agency, and IBM often connects with organizations through the United Way for its corporate donations. The Center also received considerable support from a board member who is an IBM employee; he recognized that the Center’s use of technology and its large ESL population made it a perfect fit for the Reading Recognition Software. To make the most use of the donated computers, the Center needed space for the computer lab and technology-savvy volunteers to coach and evaluate the adult learners using the software. For the computer lab, the Center bartered the IBM-donated computers for additional classroom space at Kestrel Heights, a charter school where the Center offers most of its English literacy courses. In exchange for the classroom space, Kestrel Heights students have access to the computers and software during the day, and the adult learners use them at night. Student Volunteers Serve as Tutors and Researchers For volunteers knowledgeable about technology, the Center turned to Duke University. Duke students had been volunteering at the Center over the years, particularly since it moved within walking distance to one of the college’s campuses. Because the Center’s past experience with student volunteers as tutors was mixed—students’ enthusiasm and commitment to volunteering waned as the term progressed and academic demands increased—the Center decided to work through a service-learning initiative at Duke, which connects community service to students’ research interests and grades. The Research Service-Learning (RSL) initiative requires students to develop a research question of interest to a community partner, such as the Literacy Center, and then explore that research question as part of their volunteer experience. In turn, the community partner can count on 18-20 hours of time per week from the student volunteers. The Center not only has obtained reliable volunteers through the program, but it also recently has worked with Duke to develop a new RSL course, the Lens of Literacy. Through this course, students explore the effectiveness of web-based tutoring and mentoring with young adult GED learners in the Literacy Center’s Teen Career Academy. Before being matched with a young adult learner, students participate in in-service training. The students then assist the learners in preparing for the writing subtest of the GED. Although all four partners have clearly benefited from the collaboration around IBM’s Reading Recognition Software, the main beneficiary has been the adult learners. Preliminary findings indicate that learners have more opportunity to practice their English and are making faster progress developing their literacy skills by working with the student volunteers. Steps are being taken to collect more extensive data, but the Literacy Center is confident that the data will support what the anecdotal evidence already shows.
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