About the Community Literacy Council (CLC) of Bonneville County

Every year teachers, tutors, students, and parents give positive feedback about the importance of this program.

Origins

In 1991, Jeanne Okeson heard an official from Literacy Volunteer's of America speak at Ricks College on a new approach this national organization was taking. Since Jeanne was the Tutoring Coordinator for the Adult Basic Education program at EITC, she was interested in combating illiteracy. The LVA speaker argued that to combat illiteracy most effectively, we must start at the root of the problem. Illiteracy starts with a child, one child, who slips behind in his or her reading in the early grades of the school. The gap often grows with each year of school as reading demands increase.

Her work with EITC's Adult Basic Education convinced Jeanne that our community had literacy needs. She believed this LVA approach would work well in our schools. So, Jeanne organized the Community Literacy Council of Bonneville with members from business, education, city government, and literary communities. The CLC is the formal organization to put in place a project patterned after LVA's volunteer tutorial program. Jeanne arranged to have a LVA representative come to EITC and train 10 people from Bonneville, Madison and Fremont Counties. Then Jeanne wrote for grants to get the funding to start a program in our county. This was the birth of the Time for Literacy project.

CLC's Role in Our Community

Like-minded people from our community have joined Jeanne on the council to write for grants to fund the project and solicit support from the educational and business community.