West Town’s Association House expands literacy services 

By Miriam Cintrón 

Poor families face many challenges, especially when it comes to education. Association House of Chicago at 1116 N. Kedzie Ave. in West Town helps such families close the educational gap through after-school programs, child welfare services, financial education classes, behavioral counseling, and technology courses.

One year ago, Association House expanded its offerings with Lee y Serás (Read and You Will Be) to help clients better their lives by increasing literacy. This highly successful program addresses the link between poverty and low literacy by encouraging parents to read with their children. It includes literacy training for adults and allots time for parents to read with their children before or after class; it also teaches parents to instill early literacy skills in their children to prepare them for school.

Recently, the Comcast Foundation and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a national Latino civil rights organization, awarded Association House a $75,000 grant to expand Lee y Seras. The not-for-profit Association House is an NCLR affiliate and has partnered with Comcast on various projects over the past five years; it is one of eight community-based social service organizations awarded a grant for serving the Latino community.

“Our most recent grant announcement will allow Association House to continue to do the great work to provide educational work for Chicago’s Latino community,” said Mark Allen, Comcast vice president and Association House board member. “Comcast has enjoyed a long, productive relationship with Association House that has created beneficial opportunities to better the community.”

The organization will use the grant to provide offsite training and expand Lee y Seras’s morning and evening hours for working parents. Executive Director Harriet Sadauskas said, “Our greatest thanks to Comcast and NCLR for supporting us.”

The idea for Lee y Seras came when staff members noticed many parents had to bring their children with them when they attended adult education classes. Employees realized they had the perfect opportunity to encourage parents to read with their children. Now, the program has outgrown the small room in which it began, and more than 100 people have graduated from the literacy training course.

“The program is of such great demand we have been invited to open a site at a local [elementary] school,” Sadauskas said. The principal supported Lee y Seras after seeing how it increased parent involvement and volunteering.

The program succeeds because its curriculum incorporates families’ culture and traditions. Also, it is presented in English and Spanish because “adults need to read and write in their own language before they can learn to read and write in another,” Sadauskas explained.

Although the program is “beneficial to family health” by bringing the family together, it also often serves as children’s first exposure to school, Sadauskas added. Association House has seized this opportunity to acquaint children with school and now holds book drives to provide texts for children to take home.

Lee y Seras also improves parents’ confidence in their skills and shows them “not to be ashamed to continue to study,” Sadauskas said. In fact, the program’s graduation ceremony is a source of pride for many adults. Receiving their certificate in front of their families “shows their children and family they can do it, too,” Sadauskas said.

Established in 1899, Association House offers social services and recreational activities to more than 20,000 economically disadvantaged Latino and African American families in West Town, Humboldt Park, Logan Square, Avondale, and Hermosa.