Meet Sally Brown, Executive Director of Adult Literacy Barrow and resident of Barrow County, GA.
Sally is on a mission to increase the adult education and literacy rates in Barrow County and also devotes much of her time to charity work. We’d like to thank Sally very much for sitting down with us to discuss her experience living and working in Barrow County.
Razorback to Bulldog
I’m from Arkansas and I’m a Razorback. But since I’ve spent more in tuition and books at UGA for my boys than I spent at the University of Arkansas, I think I’ve earned the right to cheer for both sides.
I participate in a couple of different churches. My husband is Catholic so we go to St. Matthew Catholic Church and then we go to Winder First Methodist.
My husband Paul and I both volunteer. We’re with the American Red Cross. We’ve been doing that for about 6 years. We deploy all over the country with Red Cross and to help with disaster response, such as Hurricane Katrina and Sandy and that sort of thing.
We met through Barrow County Habitat for Humanity when we were on the founding board that started Habitat here 24 years ago. Habitat is a very worthy cause, but with Red Cross, we can go in and help thousands of people very quickly.
We’re very involved with the Red Cross. That’s my husband’s full-time job.
I have two boys, Spencer and Taylor. They grew up in Auburn, graduated from Apalachee High School, and made Eagle Scout.
Taylor graduated from UGA, served 2 years in the Marine Corp, married his high school sweetheart, and is a park ranger with the State of Georgia. Spencer completed 2 years at UGA, did volunteer work in Florida, and lives in Athens.
I love my boys! We have an empty nest now, and I’m so proud of both of them.
Adult Literacy Barrow
The organization I head up is called Adult Literacy Barrow. We’ve blessed to have a lot of support from the community and we’re able to help a lot of people and families. That’s what’s so exciting, the number of folks we’re able to help and get through the front doors.
If you were here on a Tuesday or Thursday morning, the entire parking lot would be full and they’d be parked up on the grass.
Luckily, we have use of the Winder Housing Authority van, and often every seat will be full. It’s great to see it come rolling in and people will come piling out.
There is a day care center as well. We’ll often have anywhere from three to six kids.
The two big roadblocks for adult literacy is childcare and transportation, and thanks to our wonderful donors, we’re able to provide these services. It’s all paid for with donations. We don’t get any federal funding or anything like that.
We offer free GED and English classes on Tuesday and Thursdays morning and night.
We a room from the Housing Authority for a very minimal cost and they let us use their van. We have magnetic signs we put up on it and we just keep the gas tank full and change the oil.
If it wasn’t for working with the Housing Authority, we wouldn’t be able to do these things.
The Wimberly Center is such a great location as we can all collaborate together. There’s the Boys and Girls Club, the Housing Authority, CASA, Habitat, Barrow Family Connection and several more. There is often some overlapping of services with students so it’s a great opportunity to take advantage of the non-profit groups in the building.
Anyway, it’s just great synergy and we’ve been very fortunate with the support we’ve had. We had a very successful Literacy Ball in January which we have every year. From that we’ve been able to add classes in Auburn and Bethlehem Elementary.
We also offer free citizenship classes. We’ve had four new US citizens in the last couple of months which is very exciting.
And we’re over at the jail now which is my pet project
I’m the GED teacher at the Detention Center and I’m working with Major Robert White and Sheriff Jud Smith. We’ve had a GED class for women around a year and half and we have had 19 GEDs. And just in the last few weeks, we’ve started with the GED for the men now and we have already had 5 GED’s.
There’s also a coalition that has just started to help people transition back into a life where they don’t return to jail. The whole goal is to reduce the recidivism rate.
Probation is like a life sentence, six months at a time.
They have trouble getting hired because they’re convicted felons. So, they can’t pay their fines. They can’t make it to their required classes. They don’t have transportation. Their families are fed up with them.
They’re sleeping in cars or anywhere they can find. And finally at some point, they get desperate and will do pretty much anything for money. So boom, they’re back in jail again and then everything’s worse. More fines, more classes and longer probation.
That’s just something else I’m really interested in trying to help with. We all win when these folks are successful, which comes from them working, getting their education, and staying drug free.
Literacy Rates
So when we initially started Adult Literacy Barrow, the percentage of adults over 25 who did not have a high school education was 42%.
So that’s why this coalition started. The government and a bunch of elected leaders, religious leaders, and business leaders worked together to improve the statistic.
The has decreased from 42% to around 18%.
A lot of the problems that a community has should have grassroots solutions. Politicians, churches, school, non-profits working together, which is what happened here.
They are the folks that are going to solve the problems. People pulled together to make this happen and everyone benefits from serving all these folks.
And of course, the schools are doing a great job at offering alternatives to keep kids in school to graduate.
When we have high school aged kids come to us, we strongly encourage them to go back and try again with the school system while they can, and then if it doesn’t work they can always come back to get their GED.
There’s a lot of alternative paths for people now in relation to education which is great. Times have definitely changed for the better.
People have choices now. It’s not just college or nothing.
—-
We hope you enjoyed learning about Sally and her story.
p.s. If you enjoyed this post, there are 3 things you can do to help us tell more stories of The Faces of Barrow County:
1) Nominate someone.
If you know of someone whose story needs to be told, let us know! — Click here.
2) Share this story on Facebook.
The more we share, the more we can share. — Click here.
3) Like our Facebook Page
Click here to Like our page. Invite friends as well!
