Twice a month, Ava Zeligson stands in front of 55 strangers and, with her infectious enthusiasm, explains why each of them can make a difference in the battle against Chicago’s deeply entrenched illiteracy rate.
Ms. Zeligson is the volunteer coordinator for Open Books, the latest addition to the city’s crowded field of literacy organizations. The fact that nearly everyone who attends an Open Books orientation session goes on to volunteer is testament, at least in part, to her powers of persuasion. The fact that anyone shows up in the first place shows the wide appeal of Open Books’ mission and its relentlessly upbeat, cheerfully aggressive approach to voluntary recruitment.
“I knew immediately it was the right place for me,” said Erica Hawkinson, 28, a bilingual elementary teacher. Ms. Hawkinson had been shopping for volunteer opportunities at literacy organizations when she saw the Open Books Web site, which, thanks to an abundance of exclamation points, is almost as enthusiastic as Ms. Zeligson’s pitch.
The new River North headquarters of Open Books is in a renovated Schwinn bicycle factory. The heart of the space is the bookstore, brightly painted and stocked with more than 50,000 used books. Upstairs are offices for the small staff and classrooms for tutoring and other activities by Open Books’ army of some 3,000 volunteers.
Their ranks are growing at a rapid clip — up 30 percent from last year, said Becca Keaty, the group’s director of marketing and public relations. While the increase may be partly a result of the recession — widespread layoffs mean more qualified people with time on their hands — Open Books clearly benefits from its savvy approach to volunteerism: respond quickly to offers of help; make volunteers feel their efforts, no matter how small, are worthwhile; and make the experience fun for everyone involved.
That last task is no small challenge for a literacy organization, given the grim statistics that define its work. The National Center for Family Literacy estimates that 23 percent of American adults are unable to demonstrate basic reading proficiency, meaning they cannot read directions, fill out job applications or manage their finances. In the Chicago area, the picture is even bleaker — 53 percent of adults have low or limited literacy skills, according to Literacy Chicago, another nonprofit advocacy group.
Stacy Ratner, 37, a social-media entrepreneur who founded Open Books in 2006, refuses to dwell on the depressing figures, choosing instead to see them as a rallying cry for her organization and its wide range of programs — tutoring, online mentoring, creative-writing classes and résumé-polishing — which in 2009 reached 1,500 adults and children.
The Open Books volunteer corps skews young compared with similar organizations, Ms. Keaty said. That is probably because she and Ms. Ratner have focused their recruitment efforts on music festivals, bar nights and a Twitter feed. The result is a remarkably vigorous volunteer scene that has attracted the attention of Chicago’s literary and philanthropic communities.
But enthusiasm alone is not enough to achieve a substantive change in illiteracy trends, said William Teale, professor of education and early literacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A real shift, Mr. Teale said, would require “a concerted, coordinated effort: school districts working with agencies working with universities.” Unless that happens, he said, the impact of groups like Open Books is likely to be limited to the individuals it works with.
Sometimes, of course, that impact can be profound, and in the best cases extends well beyond its initial intent. Krystian Weglarz, 31, runs the Equipment and Technology Institute at Gage Park High School on the Southwest Side of Chicago. When he took over the institute two years ago, Mr. Weglarz was determined to push the curriculum and his students beyond conventional career- and college-prep.
“I wanted to give them the life skills they needed, like how to carry yourself at a job interview,” he said. “I can teach you how a light bulb works, but if you can’t put together a résumé, that technical knowledge isn’t going to do you much good.”
He mentioned his plans to the school’s career center, where Open Books had just pitched a fledgling initiative called V-Write, and a partnership was born. V-Write tries to match students with volunteers who help them, mainly virtually (via e-mail or phone), tackle homework assignments and organize research papers. For Mr. Weglarz’s students, it is a full-scale mentoring relationship with the potential to change lives.
“I wanted to be a mechanic,” said Eleaser Rabadan, 17. “But then I visited different jobs with my mentor, and she showed me there are a lot of different career possibilities.”
For Brittany Murphy, 17, and Jasmine Serrano, 16, mentoring is not only about becoming better writers or learning how to conduct themselves on job interviews. They plan to tour colleges with their Open Books mentors, as does Kasi Bowman, 16, who also sees her mentor as more than someone who can help with research projects.
“At first I was really confused by what ‘mentoring’ was supposed to be,” Ms. Bowman said. “I thought we’d just be meeting with someone every once in a while and listening to them talk.” Instead, she found something far more rewarding. “My mentor’s become a really good friend.”
