Volunteers for Adult Literacy in Florida

Annual Report

May 2010

Summary of Accomplishments

VALFlorida@hotmail.com

• Training: VALF provided two face-to-face workshops on program management and on working with low level learners. We provided three online workshops, one on grant writing and two on the GED. We continue to provide information on instruction, program management, funding and other issues on our blog and wiki. We have provided onsite technical assistance for programs in Tallahassee, Tavares, and Dunedin.

• Membership:  We have 50 organizational members and individual members. We are adding a business membership to provide businesses opportunities to get more involved in adult literacy. We provided training onsite, online and communication tools for members and organizational members, and provide access to our grant program. For three years VALF has awarded funding to our members.

• Board Development:  Our board continues to improved board effectiveness. We held four face-to-face meetings, monthly conference calls and the annual meeting between July 2009 and May 2010. We held one advisory board meeting, added three new regular board members, two board interns and one new advisory board member. We have ten board members on our regular board (eight regular members and two interns).

• Student Intern Program:  We established a student intern program this year with the help of two interns from the University of South Florida School of Library Information. Interns are college students who serve on the board for 6 months, agree to work on one or more projects and have the opportunity to become a regular board member. This year our interns represented VALF at the Florida Library Association Conference, served as readers for our grant program, are developing a new website, contributed to meetings and much more.
  

• Communication:  VALF published two newsletters, one on line via our Blog and the other in print format. We continue to update our blog and wiki with news, announcements, instructional strategies, idea sharing on topics-like doing more with less. We plan to introduce our new web page in the fall and plan to add a members only section. We have a new e-mail address: VALFlorida@hotmail.com.

• Grant Program:  Over the last three years, VALF has awarded 10 grants to volunteer literacy program totaling $4,400. The funding has paid for basic services and programs. This year the grant is being awarded to programs implementing strategies considered innovative in the context of their program.