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"Illiteracy and functional illiteracy can be directly linked to higher prison populations, lower household incomes, and inaccessibility to quality healthcare," Deidra explains. "Though illiteracy and functional illiteracy can affect anyone, people in low-income and underserved communities of color are more likely to be limited in education, income, and workplace advancement opportunities because of it."
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"Basic reading foundations such as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, spelling, vocabulary and comprehension are exactly what adults struggling with illiteracy need in order to build competent literacy skills and fill the gaps that illiteracy causes in education."Īnd most importantly, these services are provided at no cost, so that anyone who needs them has access. "The curriculum that our educators teach from allows our adult learners to revisit the fundamentals of reading and comprehension as if they are learning them for the first time," Deidra says. She launched Reading to New Heights, an organization that teaches adults the fundamentals of reading with one-on-one, confidential and virtual tutoring sessions with certified educators. "I just believed God was with me and the time was still now because people have been waiting for this," she says. And even though COVID-19 shut down businesses and sent people into lockdown the very next day, she didn't let it stop her. On March 12, 2020, she and another friend decided to start a nonprofit to help other adults that were functionally illiterate. "The hope, courage, and confidence she helped me find was the beautiful moment of empowerment that reminded me to create and provide a resource for people just like me." She found the courage to tell a friend, who began tutoring her. "I was working so hard to hide my literacy struggle in order to make it work, but I asked myself, 'What if I worked just as hard to fix it?'" "I felt unworthy because I knew I had this big secret - and thought if people knew, they would see that I had no value."ĭeidra continued to live like this for years until she had a lightbulb moment. "This caused me to live a life of fear, limitations, and hopelessness." "I relied heavily on movies to teach me and give me exposure to things in life that would help me relate to others," she says. Instead, I found ways to work around them in order to spare myself the embarrassment and shame that I already felt daily." I never truly fixed my literacy problems. "But once I started to apply for jobs, reality kicked in fast. "I was so proud that I actually made it through college and graduated," Deidra says.
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She was able to graduate by taking extra summer semesters, spending long nights studying, changing her major when it got too hard, and getting help from her dad. Someone who is illiterate is unable to read or write at all, but someone who is functionally illiterate has some reading skills - they're just not strong enough to manage daily living and employment tasks.
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According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), 21 percent of adults in the United States (about 43 million) fall into the illiterate/functionally illiterate category.įor Deidra, college was the first time she experienced and understood what functional illiteracy was. Now she's striving to help the almost 43,000,000 adults who still are struggling. After struggling for years, and eventually finding support, she started a nonprofit to help other adults facing their own challenges with literacy. "I was turned away because I was over the age of 17, and other private options like one-on-one tutoring were financially out of reach for me."ĭeidra promised that one day she'd do something to fix it. After graduating from high school, she started looking for support to improve her reading skills.