Let’s REach, Teach, and Elevate
1 Million Learners Together!
The Story
Press Release Link
- One million adult learners nationwide to receive free mobile literacy and work readiness courses - with no internet service required
- Cell-Ed has partnered with the state of New York, the Barbara Bush Foundation and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation for the 1 Million Learner Challenge
- Low-literate adults are put at greater risk within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic as they likely have reduced access to information on how to protect their families and themselves
- They are also often cut off from online remote learning courses as nearly half of low-income adults do not have the internet service required (see “Research” below)
Research
Literacy
- 36 million adults possess low literacy skills (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)
- Over 8 million of these adults struggle to read even short texts to locate information (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)
- For those working in the service sector, which has been hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic:
- 62% have low literacy
- 74% have low numeracy
(Source: National Skills Coalition)
Lack of online access
- For adults who earn less than $30,000 a year:
- 44% of adults do not have home broadband services
- 46% do not have a traditional computer
- 29% do not have smartphones
(Source: Pew Research)
- Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Cell-Ed has received a 20-fold increase in requests from adult education providers seeking offline remote learning options so they can serve this population (Source: Cell-Ed)
