Literacy means a better life for Green Bay Families

GREEN BAY, WI – (WGBW) Adults and families coming into the Green Bay area from other countries find help overcoming language and literacy barriers thanks to the efforts of Literacy Green Bay. 

Executive Director Eric Sponholtz says Literacy Green Bay has been helping community members for 42 years in an all-encompassing effort to help the community achieve their goals to make a better life for their families. 

“Literacy is such a big piece of what we do as an organization in adult education and how we’re helping people trying to become better community members and literacy is at the start of that,” said Sponholtz. “What we’re doing with our ELL classes and tutoring programs and things like that, really setting people up in the community to be better community members. Some of them just want to read to their kids. Some of them want to get a better job and have a better life for their family.” 

Volunteers are the life-blood of the organization. The one-on-one tutoring program is all volunteer. Sponholtz says the tutors help with GED prep and citizenship prep in addition to other programs. There are many other opportunities to volunteer as well.

“Obviously, we’ve got our classes going on in the basement,” said Sponholtz. “We’ve got data entry. We’ve got everything from helping with a class to helping file things, or helping to work with making our spaces look brighter.”

Sponholtz tells the story of one person that Literacy Green Bay was able to help.

“We had someone who came to us from South Africa. Back in South Africa, he was a refrigerator technician. When he came over to the States…he wanted to have that better life and wanted to make sure that he had what he needed skill-wise to be able to get a better job,” said Sponholtz. “As it turned out, here in Green Bay, got a job with a company that was willing to pay for his recertification in the U.S. to be a refrigerator technician. We kind of helped him indirectly be able to get into that spot and get into that space.”

Literacy Green Bay offers adult tutoring, English Language Learner (ELL) classes, college and career preparation, citizen classes and workforce skills. There are about 115 people on the waiting list for the English Language Learner classes. 

The mission of Literacy Green Bay is to help adults and families acquire the reading, writing, math, English Language, computer, and workforce skills needed to function effectively as workers and community members.