Guadalupe School gets national plaudits

Guadalupe School has received national recognition for its volunteer program that serves both adults and students.

The Voluntary Improvement Program was recognized as one of the top 10 volunteer-based English as a second language programs in the nation earlier this fall.

And Tuesday the school announced plans to mentor other adult ESL programs nationwide that want to adopt a similar model as part of a national literacy project.

Established nearly 40 years ago, Guadalupe serves disadvantaged children, many of them immigrants with non-English-speaking parents. Parent-educators coach parents from birth on how to read with their children while elementary-age students have one-on-one reading and study time with school volunteers.

In the evening, volunteers in the adult VIP program teach English to low-income immigrant adults. The students are placed in small groups and are instructed by volunteer tutors who work under staff members.

According to Kate Diggins, VIP director, the program serves around 250 adult students a year and is backed by 140 to 170 volunteers who provide 15,000 hours of adult instruction each year.

Diggins attributed part of the program's success to the longevity of its volunteers. While the school requires only a three-month commitment, the average longevity of a volunteer is around 15 months.

"The longer they are with us, the more skills the develop, increasing the quality of the program," Diggins said.

The national literacy project, launched by the UPS Foundation and ProLiteracy America, enlisted Guadalupe and 10 other top volunteer-based ESL programs to mentor similar programs that need assistance across the country.

During the next 18 months, program leaders will share their experiences and create a guide to help other publicly funded adult education programs recruit, manage, and support volunteers.

The guide will be distributed nationally.

ProLiteracy America is the U.S. program of ProLiteracy Worldwide, and represents 1,200 local program affiliates in all 50 states and 120 partner programs in 62 developing countries.

---

E-mail: terickson@desnews.com