President's Message

Everyone connected to learning is thinking about “Back to School”, including retailers. At GMLC, we are returning to and continuing our work of collaborating with literacy agencies. In a separate article on this page, you can read about our new Web site which the Public Relations committee was instrumental in developing. The PR committee is currently creating a new marketing brochure and has several other projects on its agenda. The PR committee is looking for additional members. The committee meets monthly and is looking for new input and ideas. Please contact Mary Moze (mozem@matc.edu) for more information and to help on this committee. Everything we do to inform the community about literacy will help each of our agencies!

This is my last “President’s Message”; beginning at the Annual Meeting, GMLC will have a new president. Allow me to thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to serve the literacy community in Milwaukee, to learn much about literacy needs both nationally and locally, and to make many new friends. It was a busy two years! Under the new leadership, GMLC will grow stronger and develop new avenues of serving agencies. I will continue to serve on the GMLC board and on committees with many of you, I hope.

Mary Moze

Jaws fell; muscles flexed

This year’s Scholastic Books donation made the volunteers’ jaws drop! We received 51 cartons containing 4,300 books. Last year’s donation of 3,500 books in 38 cartons seemed small compared to this year. So did the weight difference – up from 703 pounds. to 1,352 pounds. That’s about 26 pounds per box.

Undaunted, the GMLC volunteers flexed our muscles, and in two hours we had unpacked and sorted the shipment. Upon inspection, we found 25 titles were in Spanish. That was especially important to us since many of our members work for agencies with Hispanic clients. Many of the books also encourage parent-child interaction, and that is good because family literacy is a goal of all literacy organizations. The books covered pre-school to middle school; in fact some of the titles appeal to adults.

All of these wonders were donated by Scholastic Books, Inc., and the GMLC receives them due to our membership in Literacy USA.

Each of 17 agencies represented in GMLC received approximately 200 books, and their comments were very gratifying. The Racine Correctional Agency group was overjoyed that they would have new books for the inmates and families. Some agencies told us there often were no children’s books in the homes; others emphasized the financial poverty of an immigrant’s life and the need for literacy materials.

Next year the volunteers will do weight lifting prior to distributing books. We’re ready!

-- Nancy Hindin