Literacy Green Bay highlights successes and volunteers

GREEN BAY, WI – (WGBW) – In Green Bay, when people need help learning English as a foreign language or need better reading skills in order to succeed in the job world, the one organization they can go to is Literacy Green Bay.  

11th Annual Award and Appreciation Breakfast

Executive Director Eric Sponholz on June 19th there will be an award and appreciation breakfast to honor successes, volunteers, students, and board members

“It’s an opportunity for us to highlight a couple of different places – Our students who are just doing wonderful things, our volunteers, highlighting them. The corporate support we have. And then really some of our outgoing board members. I think sometimes boards and board members…It’s one of those things where they do a lot of work and provide a different perspective for us because we’re in it day to day,” said Sponholz. “They’re able to provide that different perspective and help in ways that they’re able to through the skill sets that they have.”

Sponholz said celebrating the wins of volunteers and students helps the program as a whole. He added that volunteers get as much out of the program as the students do.

“We always say it impacts the volunteers as much as it impacts the students,” said Sponholz. “Some of our long-time volunteers are long-time people who have been matched with a student in the tutoring program.  That’s why they keep coming back. Each and every year it means a little bit more. They have students that they go with from year one to when they finally graduate out of the program. It turns into a family thing.”

About Literacy Green Bay

Literacy Green Bay has been helping families for 42 years, says Sponholz. 

“Folks that have a lot of different stories – people from South Africa, Ukrainian refugees, Afghan refugees, Hispanic folks.  It’s so cool because a lot of the different stories. Some people just want to read to their kids or be able to read to their kids at bedtime. Some people are looking for better-paying jobs and to have that communication back and forth,” Sponholz said. “That’s really at the crux of our mission is to be able to make them more productive citizens. One of the big ways to do that is through adult literacy and adult education.”

Sponholz says that many people come to the U.S.A. to make a better life for themselves and their families. 

“We have a great partnership with NWTC referring students out there for those higher level classes. But we like to focus on that pre-literacy–that level one– where, some of them can’t converse. Some of them can’t pick out a picture on a page and tell you what that is,” said Sponholz. “So trying to learn the fundamentals. It’s like sports, trying to learn the fundamentals. And once you get past that you can really make an impact.”

Continuing excellence is one of the goals of Literacy Green Bay, said Sponholz. It’s not just about the students improving everyday, it’s also about how each individual volunteer and staff member can improve each day.

At the end of the day, you know, we always talk about– as a staff– we always talk about getting one percent better each day and whatever it is that we’re doing that day. How are you contributing to the overall impact of the organization? And so that the next day we’re just a little bit better than we were the day before,” Sponholz said. “And that’s part of what we do with our students and the effect that we have.”

Literacy Green Bay offers adult tutoring, English Language Learner (ELL) classes, college and career preparation, citizen classes and workforce skills. 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.