TAKE FIVE!

January 12, 2021

Jenny Sanchez:
Hello, I’m Jenny Sanchez. Welcome to Sullivan 180 Presents Take Five!. Our guest today is Angela Dutcher from Literacy Volunteers of Sullivan County. Angela, thank you for joining me.

Angela Dutcher:
Thank you for having me.

Jenny Sanchez:
Can you please introduce yourself, your title, and tell us a little bit about your organization?

Angela Dutcher:
Sure. My name is Angela Dutcher. I’m the executive director of Literacy Volunteers of Sullivan County. We teach adults how to read. We have services which include English as a second language, basic literacy, high school, equivalency preparation and citizenship prep. And we also run our not-for-profit used bookstore here in Monticello called the “Read It Again” bookstore, and we have another small bookstore in White Lake called Past Perfect. And those are our fundraisers for the programs.

Jenny Sanchez:
How has your programming and your services changed due to COVID-19?

Angela Dutcher:
Well, we were closed completely. The literacy program and the bookstore were closed until the end of June, the middle of July. We’re slowly getting some of our students back. We’ll talk about the programs first, slowly. We had 95 active students between all of our programs, citizenship literacy, ESL, and we currently have maybe 20 active. A lot of them just dropped off the radar. Didn’t come back, not ready yet. But we do have a handful of one-on-one tutoring that is going on in our building here in 63 North Street. And we also do have, some of our tutors are doing online by hour, or on the phone with their students, which is pretty cool. But one way that was really impacted is with the libraries. A lot of our tutors would meet their students in the local libraries, all over Sullivan County. And of course now we can’t do that because with the half hour time limits, like most libraries allow for, for people to be in. There’s not enough time for tutoring. And so we’ve lost that part of our program. If people can’t be serviced here in Monticello at the Literacy Center, they’re not getting there, maybe talking on the phone with their tutors. But they’re really not getting the services that we used to have.

Jenny Sanchez:
And what can Sullivan County residents do to help your programs and your organization?

Angela Dutcher:
Well, the number one way to help the programs is to shop at our bookstores because we’ve lost a lot of funding. We’ve got funding issues. We have grants from Sullivan County legislatures, we have grants from New York state department of education; our two main funders. We lost the Sullivan County legislative grant indefinitely at this point for last year and this year, and our New York state funding is at less than half of what it was. So the bookstore sales are vital to keep us going. You know, we do get, we take donations of books in the bookstore, and those are always welcome and really important. But shopping here is the secret, so that we can keep our students because like I said, we still have the programs going. We’re still working with our students. We had two students, we actually had one student the task program, which is the high school equivalency has started up again. One of our students passed her high school equivalency exam two weeks, three weeks ago, and we have two more students taking it this week. So we’re still going. We had a student receive their citizenship last week. So the students and the services are still here our tutors are still tutoring the main programs at the literacy center. And we just need people to shop at the bookstores to keep all of that going

Jenny Sanchez:
Aside from people shopping, is there another way that residents can stay in touch with literacy volunteers?

Angela Dutcher:
Yes. We have our Facebook page, which if you just went on Facebook and look, the Literacy Volunteers of Sullivan County, you’ll find us, we’re very active on the Facebook page. I try to post daily, and it also links you to our website, which gives you more information on what we do. And it’s not as interactive as the Facebook page, but it gives you all the information that you need. The other thing that we need is always tutors. All of our tutoring is done online on an online platform. So there’s no interaction, the face-to-face and you can become a tutor in as little as 12 to 14 hours of training online. We also could use bookstore volunteers to help us keep the places pretty as possible.

Jenny Sanchez:
So. Okay, great. So the best way is to look up your organization on Facebook and then link to the website and see your updates on Facebook.

Angela Dutcher:
Yep. The website tells you everything that we have and what we offer and how you can help. There’s a whole page on the facebook, on the website, on how you can help.

Jenny Sanchez:
Is there anything else that you’d to share?

Angela Dutcher:
Well, I’d like to thank everybody because our community is so wonderful reaching out to each other and helping each other, right. At the beginning of the pandemic, we had a major leak in our roof and I had put out on Facebook, we’ve got this unexpected problem and people stepped up and really helped. So it’s like, I want to thank the community because they’re always right there trying to help each other and help us. And we just want to give back as much as we can. The bookstore is so good for people that don’t know it’s a used bookstore. And our prices, hardcover books are $1.50, even the newer ones. Children’s books are 50 cents because we want books in the hands of everybody.

Jenny Sanchez:
Angela, thank you so much for being here and for sharing all about your great programs with us. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.