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From Family Literacy to Job Readiness
Chinatown's AACA Plans to Transform Family Literacy Program into
Job-Readiness Course
By Adam Smith, Sampan
Boston - May 5, 2006 - A longtime family literacy program offered by
the Asian American Civic Association will soon come to an end, but
directors at the Chinatown agency hope to reinvent the program in the
form of an intensive job-readiness course.
For more than a decade, the Asian Family Literacy Program has taught
mothers, grandmothers, and children English and how to adapt to American
culture.
The reason for the program's pending closure -- and its new replacement
program -- is funding. For years the AACA has depended on a federal
grant distributed by Boston's Office of Jobs and Community Service to
support the $45,000-a-year course. But this year, the Office of Jobs and
Community Service, which received a cut in federal monies, changed its
funding priorities. It no longer wanted proposals for English as a
second language training and became more focused on helping people get
out of poverty.
Sunny Schwartz, deputy director of the AACA, said the re-tooled
proposal, titled the Boston Adult Self-Sufficiency Project, or BASS,
would not teach English, but instead serve as a "transitional" program
to help prepare unemployed Boston residents, mostly in Chinatown, find
work.
In designing BASS, directors and teachers at AACA met with the managers
of low-income housing complexes in and around Chinatown who said they
had many residents who had been jobless for years after getting laid off
from jobs as garment workers. A manager of the Tai Tung Village housing
complex said these unemployed tenants feel "miserable, just stuck in
their apartments," according to Jill Uchiyama, instructor of the Family
Literacy program, who would teach the BASS course.
BASS, if approved for funding, would aim to teach poor and unemployed
Boston residents interviewing skills, how to create resumes, and other
skills for applying for work and securing jobs.
"I think it's really needed in the community,” said Schwartz.
The program also fits the AACA's shift in recent years towards providing
job-skills training. The association provides courses that teach English
for employment, office skills training, facilities maintenance training,
and, through a partnership with other Boston nonprofits, offers
automotive repair training. In addition it offers job placement
assistance to students.
"I think AACA would like to be a walk-in center where people could come
for job searches, and (BASS) could complement that," said Schwartz.
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If approved for funding, BASS would begin in July, as soon as the
current and last Asian Family Literacy class ends.
The transition offers both a potential new beginning and a sad loss,
said Uchiyama.
"I think it's definitely sad," she said about the end of Family
Literacy. "It's been a staple here for so long."
An important role of the course was to increase the independence of the
students, said Uchiyama. When some students began the course, they were
uncomfortable communicating with non-Chinese or traveling around Boston
on the subway, though they had lived in the city for several years, said
Uchiyama.
"Family Literacy tends to get a reputation as not a good program because
the goal is not to go to get a job or go to college," she said. "It's
not as tangible for funders."
The Asian American Civic Association publishes the
Sampan.
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