The mission of the Council is to promote, coordinate and facilitate planning and development of literacy services in Culpeper County, Virginia to anyone over the age of 18 years.
For twenty-two years, the Culpeper Literacy Council has successfully trained, provided resources for and managed volunteers willing to teach people to improve their literacy skills. The effort toward improved literacy in the Culpeper area was initiated by a group of concerned citizens from the community. The Council held its first formal meeting in 1988 and was established as a non-profit in 1989. The Council was housed in the basement of the Jefferson Homebuilders building in 1990 and moved to its present location in January of 2005. We now have three offices, a library/curriculum room, a classroom and three additional rooms for tutoring. Currently the board employs 4 part-time staff: a Director, an ESOL Instructor, an EL Civics instructor, and a GED Instructor. The Council is governed by a board of twelve to fifteen members. The board meets bi-monthly and committees meet separately from regular board meetings. The director reports to the board at each bi-monthly meeting.
The Council offers one-on-one tutoring to adults wishing to learn to read, improve basic skills, obtain a GED, or learn English as a second language. We also provide tutoring for students that need instruction for the ASVAB, and TOEFL exams. The Council also teaches a pre-GED/GED class consisting of students from the community as well as referrals from other service organizations. We offer free practice GED tests to our students and the general public on a monthly basis. In addition, we conduct tutor training workshops and tutor in-services to insure that our tutors are knowledgeable and up-to-date. For our ESOL students we offer one-on-one tutoring, small group instruction on Rosetta Stone and two levels of Saturday morning conversational English.
The Council sees itself as an advocate for literacy and adult education. We are working to provide educational opportunities to more people than ever before. We are well received by the community and have enjoyed positive support from our local media and businesses. Culpeper Literacy Council has been challenged by the tremendous growth in our population. We accept this period of growth as an opportunity to improve the services we provide in all facets of our programming.
Our targeted population is those individuals residing in the County of Culpeper.