With Help from Goodwill, Good People Get to Work

Support from Goodwill Industries Allows Lincoln Literacy Tutors to Teach Life Changing Skills to Immigrants, Refugees and Homegrown Americans

Goodwill Industries Serving Southeast Nebraska, Inc. has extended its partnership and continued its support of Lincoln Literacy, enabling the community’s leading charitable provider of language and literacy services to help even more people to gain the gateway skills to employment. Goodwill not only provides monthly financial support from the proceeds of its store sales, it also hosts one of Lincoln Literacy’s New Beginnings classes at the Goodwill headquarters at 2100 Judson St. Every Monday morning, adults whose language is English but whose reading and writing is not up to par come to Goodwill to learn new and vital skills from Lincoln Literacy instructors. That is just one of nearly 20 sites across the city where Lincoln Literacy holds free weekly classes for adult literacy students and English language learners. Among its offerings are family literacy classes, workforce readiness English, and citizenship preparation. Last year, Lincoln Literacy’s volunteer tutors served 1,082 people, ranging in age from three to 78. Enrollment in Lincoln Literacy’s classes jumped 12 percent in the first quarter of this year. Lincoln Literacy, an award-winning nonprofit organization, has been serving our community since 1972. Its students have a long track record of success. Last year74 percent of English language learners made benchmark progress on year-end exams, as did 66 percent of adult literacy learners. The No. 1 reason for leaving the program is that learners get jobs. See lincolnliteracy.org for more.