Today we’d like to introduce you to Shavawn Simmons.
Hi Shavawn, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In 2016, I retired from Clayton County Public Schools and my role as a high school English teacher. In post-retirement I knew I wanted to stay connected to students and their families. As a classroom teacher, I recognized that middle and high school students often lacked the familial support they needed at home. Parents were either working and/or did not have the strategies to assist their middle and high school students with literacy. Additionally, many of my students had parents who were not 1st language English speakers.
Thus, the creation of Family Literacy of Georgia: an organization with the mission to strengthen minority communities by increasing their access to books and other literacy resources.
More specifically, an organization designed to reach middle school students with literacy resources targeted to black and brown children. Often, the middle school-aged child is left out of the literacy equation where most attention is given to the enrichment of the younger learner.
I am a proud advocate for the middle school child, grades five to 9.
I wanted to have a go-to organization for parents, kids, and educators that would help them identify engaging books to make READING FUN!!! Clearly, make a paradigm shift that would make books synonymous with pleasure! For kids and adults, books are often a chore and only equivalent to the rudiments of school.
So, this year…5 years since organizing Family Literacy of Georgia, we now have a solid strategy to achieve our mission going forward: invest, acquire, and place book-sharing stations throughout communities of color with intentionality. Moreover, stock those sharing structures with books by authors of color with protagonist and non-fiction characters of color.
To achieve this goal, we were honored to be selected by the original Little Free Library organization to partner in their newest initiative Read in Color. The Read in Color model is a perfect fit for the strategic goals of Family Literacy of Georgia. Diverse books for diverse communities!
We have successfully placed 10 structures and hope to place 10 more in 2022.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The greatest challenge in growing a non-profit organization has been the focus, the message. How do we get a succinct message to our target audience? Who is our target audience? What’s our story? Well, we believe with the introduction of a focused approach to identifying and placing book-sharing structures, our message is easier for funders to grasp. Easy to say yes too! We want to position our organization as the Book Desert killer!!!!! Book deserts are similar to food deserts. In that, a “book desert” is defined as a geographical area with limited access to books. We want to chip away at book deserts.
Because we are founder-managed, it’s one person doing many things. Our lack of funding, our lack of staff limits our growth. We need a capital infusion to assist with staffing an Executive Director. Most grants are not for operations. With the pandemic, we are seeing some funders modify their criteria for grant applicants. We are also re-building our Board of Directors. We are hopeful that this restructure will improve our effectiveness in the community non-profit space within the state and region.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
In 2016, I retired from Clayton County Public Schools and my role as a high school English teacher. In post-retirement I knew I wanted to stay connected to students and their families. As a classroom teacher, I recognized that middle and high school students often lacked the familial support they needed at home. Parents were either working and/or did not have the strategies to assist their middle and high school students with literacy. Additionally, many of my students had parents who were not 1st language English speakers.
Thus, the creation of Family Literacy of Georgia: an organization with the mission to strengthen minority communities by increasing their access to books and other literacy resources.
More specifically, an organization designed to reach middle school students with literacy resources targeted to black and brown children. Often, the middle school-aged child is left out of the literacy equation where most attention is given to the enrichment of the younger learner.
I am a proud advocate for the middle school child, grades five to 9.
(Copied from Section 1) I wanted to have a go-to organization for parents, kids, and educators that would help them identify engaging books to make READING FUN!!! Clearly, make a paradigm shift that would make books synonymous with pleasure! For kids and adults, books are often a chore and only equivalent to the rudiments of school.
So, this year…5 years since organizing Family Literacy of Georgia, we now have a solid strategy to achieve our mission going forward: invest, acquire, and place book-sharing stations throughout communities of color with intentionality. Moreover, stock those sharing structures with books by authors of color with protagonist and non-fiction characters of color.
To achieve this goal, we were honored to be selected by the original Little Free Library organization to partner in their newest initiative Read in Color. The Read in Color model is a perfect fit for the strategic goals of Family Literacy of Georgia. Diverse books for diverse communities!
We have successfully placed 10 structures and hope to place 10 more in 2022.
We love surprises, fun facts, and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I am a mixed media collage artist.
IG: artsy5672
Website: artsy5672.com
Contact Info:
- Email: info@familyliteracyga.org
- Website: https://www.familyliteracyga.org/
- Instagram: Familylitga1
- Facebook: Family Literacy of Georgia
- Twitter: Familylitga1
Image Credits
Shavawn P. Simmons
