City to Create Literacy Endowment

The Minneapolis-based Urban Literacy Development Fund has awarded Boston a $40,000 grant which will support city programs that teach adults to read, a mayoral aide said yesterday.

"It's seed money for the establishment of a fund which eventually--a year or two from now--will hopefully have money to give out," said Silja S. Kallenbach, director of the division of adult literacy at the mayor's Office of Jobs and Community Services.

Kallenbach, who is one of the heads of the Mayor Raymond L. Flynn's Boston Literacy Initiative, said the money will be used to help set up "a major plan for fundraising for the Adult Literacy Program on a scheme that has not yet existed in this time."

The Boston Literacy Initiative has not yet determined how it will allocate the funds, Kallenbach said, but in addition to establishing an endowment for the program, the organization plans to upgrade existing literacy programs and create additional ones.

Much of the money will probably be spent toward the salary of a professional fundraiser for the literacy program "when we find the right staff to hire," said Kallenbach.

Among the 29 urban areas designated as eligible to apply to the Urban Literacy Development Fund for money, 11 will receive funding and six will be granted the maximum amount of $40,000, said Margaret A. Borg, a project administrator at the fund.

Boston was the only city applying that planned to create an endowment for its literacy program. "[Boston's] was a very unique proposal," said Borg.

"Our argument was that we need to think seriously about an endowment for the literacy efforts in the city," said Henry L. Allen, dean of the Extended Education Program at Roxbury Community College, where the Adult Literary Resource Institute is based. "We had a very successful model here--the Adult Literacy Initiative."

The Boston Literacy Initiative runs a 15-neighborhood program for adults, which teaches its 1400 students at levels ranging from basic literacy to a high school diploma equivalency program, Kallenbach said.

The head of the literacy effort said it was difficult to estimate how many adults in Boston cannot read or write.

"What the grant is a reflection of its that we are aware of the problem and well on our way to solving it in a creative and responsive way," Kallenbach said.

The development fund receives much of its financial support from the Gannett Foundation, the Minneapolis Foundation and a social service organization called "Action."

"This is really a new initiative," said Kallenbach. "What makes this different is it gives us a good shot at tapping resources available through the private sector."