Read Easy Plymouth awarded £6k to help local adults learn to read

Local community group Read Easy Plymouth is celebrating after being awarded £6,000 in National Lottery funding to support its work teaching local adults to learn to read, or to improve their reading skills. The group will use the cash to recruit and train more volunteer coaches, provide reading books and other literacy resources for the coaching sessions, and publicise their work more widely within the local community.

Read Easy Plymouth, which is affiliated to national charity Read Easy UK, has been running since April this year, and is staffed by a small team of volunteers. Read Easy recruits and trains volunteer reading coaches, who work on a one-to-one basis with adult readers, giving them regular, free and confidential coaching twice a week. There is no time limit – every reader starts at the beginning with book 1 and moves at their own pace. The one-to-one nature of the coaching helps the readers to grow in confidence over time. As they progress through the five reading books, they are awarded certificates to mark their success.

Read Easy Plymouth currently has 14 reader and coach pairs meeting regularly in libraries, community and health centres in and around the city. The group would like to express its gratitude to these organisations for their invaluable support in providing these essential spaces, where readers can feel comfortable, relaxed and able to focus on their reading sessions.

The new funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, will allow Read Easy Plymouth to recruit more coaches, put them through the Read Easy in-house training, and match them with more readers. It will pay for the excellent Turning Pages reading books and accompanying readers, which are published by the Shannon Trust and form the basis of all Read Easy coaching sessions. These books are aimed specifically at adult readers, with content that stimulates and is relevant to the adult learner.

The impact on the lives of adults who learn to read with Read Easy is huge and, in the words of many who have successfully tackled the challenge, life changing. Adults who struggle to read are five times more likely to be unemployed and four times more likely to experience long-term unemployment. They often struggle to help their children with learning; they are less likely to vote or take part in public and community life, and they often have difficulties with even the most ordinary tasks such as food shopping or using public transport.

For these adults, learning to read will open up areas of life and living that have hitherto been closed to them.

Sue Trousdale, team leader of Read Easy Plymouth, says: “We’re delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work in this way. Now, thanks to National Lottery players, we will be able to press on with our plans to recruit and train more coaches, and thereby help more local adults to learn to read.”

Marianna Bell, Coordinator with Read Easy Plymouth, says:  “Over the last couple of weeks I have visited coach and reader pairs...The sense of joy and celebration from both readers and coaches is heart-warming to see.”