Dear Supporters,

Thank you! 2023 was a wonderful year for us, and we're grateful to you for being a part of it. 

Seattle Literacy is an all-volunteer organization providing free language and reading classes, aimed especially at adults who want extra help learning to read and write in English. We specialize in teaching adult students with limited literacy skills, regardless of their English level.

The vast majority of our spending is on rent. Having a dedicated place to offer classes and tutoring sessions and to conduct assessments is invaluable. We've been able to build a large on-site library of resources that allows us to customize our lessons to meet the very different learning needs of individual students.  

After rent and associated utility costs, our remaining expenditures go to providing students with  supplies, like textbooks, paper, or pencils, that they need for classes, removing one more potential obstacle to their learning. 

As we expected, 2023 included continued shifting of class schedules and tutoring sessions as we try to maintain our primary focus on adult literacy. 

We've reduced the number of general English as a Second Language (ESL) classes we offer, allowing us to concentrate on our literacy tutoring services, but we also discovered is another important gap we can fill. Most of the other local ESL class providers offer limited windows of registration opportunities throughout the year, so students often need to wait several weeks or months before they can begin classes. We've begun offering short sessions of "Survival English" to help students begin improving their English skills while they wait to register for more standard classes, and these have been very successful.  

We've also continued assisting learners in finding and registering for classes that best address their individual needs. 

Our biggest challenge is our inability to serve as many students as we would like, due to fundamental limitations of space and time. 

We've improved our connections with other organizations serving the local immigrant population and adult learners, and we hope to sustain and improve those relationships in 2024. We also anticipate ongoing demand assisting students looking for English classes, and we believe that our growing network will help us make those referrals. We expect to continue offering "Survival English" classes, and of course, we plan to continue providing opportunities for adults to learn and improve their English literacy skills. 

Thank you again for your support. All the best in 2024,

Seattle Literacy