San Diego Public Library - READ San Diego - Literacy program spells opportunity R-E-A-D

Literacy program spells opportunity R-E-A-D
San Diego Union: September 7, 1988 by Karla Peterson
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At an age when most people are starting out, 22-year-old Jenifer Marlowe is starting over.

She is newly married, pregnant and living in a new city. And she is finally learning to read.

According to the San Diego County Literacy Network, 350,000 San Diegans have impaired reading and writing skills. They are the functional illiterate, and two months ago, Marlowe was one of them. Now that she's enrolled in the READ/San Diego adult literacy program, Marlowe is looking forward to belonging to a different group.

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READ/San Diego, which is offered through the San Diego Public Library, is the newest addition to the San Diego County Literacy Network's roster of adult learning centers. The grand opening of the Euclid Avenue site is tomorrow, on International Literacy Day, and Marlowe will be there.

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Tutors at the READ center encourage students to develop their own goals, which can be as simple as getting a driver's licence, or as complicated as earning a high-school equivalency diploma. Since opening in June, the center has trained 62 volunteer tutors and matched up 50 tutor-student pairs. By holding the official grand opening on International Literacy Day, the people at READ hope to alert even more students and volunteers to the importance of the written word.

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