Críticas Magazine

Bruce Jensen

$5,000 literacy grants backed by my cheapskate shopping habits
February 3, 2008

If your library hasn’t yet applied for one of those $5,000 project awards from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation you now have some extra time to submit, online, one of the easiest grant applications you’ll ever see in your life. You’ve got till the end of the day on February 22 to complete a couple short forms along with just a few hundred words of narrative about how your public library will use the money to enhance literacy services to adult learners of English.

The only catch is that you have to be within 20 miles of one of those big yellow Dollar General signs. You can use their store locator if you’re not sure. But how can you not be sure? If there’s a Dollar General in the vicinity, frugal public servants are shopping there. There are three within walking distance of our chacal, and 972 others here in the state of Texas; I have dumped a small fortune into DG’s till--come to think of it, they sold me my eyeglasses--and it would do my heart good to see you and your immigrant patrons get some of that.

But even if you’re somewhere west of Arizona or up in the Great Northwest and have never heard of Dollar General, there is still something for you in all this: it’s the companion The American Dream Starts @ Your Library Toolkit just launched by the American Library Association.

This is a spare, compact site with just enough resources and inspiration to help further the work of librarians interested in serving speakers of other languages. "At your library," we’re reminded there, "new immigrants can find the reassurance and the resources they need to navigate a new culture and acquire new literacy skills." They sure can.

The tips in the Toolkit are sound and concise, stuff you might be able to put to use right away. And chasing the links can take you to some interesting places. Pueblo, Colorado doesn’t have a Dollar General but of course boasts the main distribution point for government publications, the Federal Citizen Information Center. The FCIC’s Multilanguage Gateway points to useful information in all of 28 languages. Some of those have more material there than others: Spanish has so many it gets its own page of thematically organized links at GobiernoUSA.gov. 

Anyway, let us know if you get one of the grants. I'll drink a toast to you with some of that Clover Valley diet Black Cherry soda they sell at DG. At four bits a liter it tastes like sheer nectar.

Posted by Bruce Jensen on February 3, 2008 | Comments (0)