Indiana State Literacy Association 2020 Conference

This session will focus on identifying community partners and sponsors, how to engage with them, and how to build a sustainable community network to support literacy efforts at the school. We will offer tools and other materials to help schools explain the literacy crisis to their community and open the doorways to creating an engaged community with the mission to focus on literacy as a lifelong, vital skill.

We'll break down how to show community leaders “What's in it for me?” and why they should join on your mission and become champions for your cause. By tying in relevant studies of literacy and how it affects the economic outcomes in a region, participants will learn the real cost of illiteracy within their community. They will be better prepared to be able to educate their community leaders that the path to a strong community starts with literacy.

We will provide real world examples of projects in action and will include a breakout activity where participants can use what they learned throughout the presentation to come up with their own community engagement plan focused on literacy.