GLA looks to partner with Greer businesses
The Greenville Literacy Association (GLA) is looking to partner with Greer businesses to highlight adult education services offered at the Bonds Career Center.
With funds from the Make Greer Great grant by Partnership For Tomorrow, the GLA is planning a week-long Educate to Elevate event for July.
“We’re calling it Educate to Elevate, which really sums up the idea that we’re after,” said Eleanor Vaughn, GLA Director of Development. “We will be able to elevate the citizens of Greer who wish to expand their horizons with education.
“We want people to know about our services in Greer,” she said. “We want to give people an opportunity to pop in and find out really what it is that we do and how affordable and how accessible and how easy it is to improve your station by coming through our services.”
The one-week, festival celebration of adult education set for the week of July 15 will include skill pop-up classes, business presentations and a small job fair.
“We’re so excited about a week of skill pop-up type classes,” Vaughn said. “We would offer a resume building class because we do offer career readiness services, and that would be a taste of that side of what we offer.”
“We hope to do them in the afternoon and in the evening,” she said. “That’s going to depend on who we get and when they’re available.”
Pop-up classes, tentatively set for Monday through Thursday from 12-2 p.m. and 6:30-8 p.m., will range from basic computer skills to financial literacy.
“We also wanted to offer just connections with people,” Vaughn said. “We have lots of people who go through our ESL program, and they want to become translators, for instance, translators at a hospital. For Educate to Elevate, we might have an HR representative to come in and explain what the job requirements are to become a translator, what the schedule might be like, what the pay might be like, just to give them a real look at what the actual job and the job hunt are going to be like.”
“We really just want to get our students and employers in the same room together, and we really think that’s going to benefit both sides,” Vaughn said.
GLA staff spent January planning the schedule of the week and are now starting to reach out to local businesses.
“We are planning to and excited to ask businesses that are in Greer to come and present to some of our interested folks about what they do and who they are and who they hire and what that hiring process is like,” Vaughn said. “We want our students to know exactly what they are going to face when they get their GED and head out into the world.”
“The best way we think to do that is to get them actual HR representatives and actual managers and actual business owners in there telling them exactly what they want and exactly what they need,” she said. “We really are looking for people to reach out to us, anyone who might be interested in participating in this.”
Friday of that week is being reserved for the job fair, tentatively set for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., at Bonds Career Center.
“We are planning on having a small job fair, so we’re going to invite businesses that want to hire folks that have their GED and might want to hire some of our ESL folks,” Vaughn said.
“We’ll set up tables,” she said. “We’ll allow people to come in and set up with information.”
GLA, a 501c3 nonprofit, received $3,000 from the grant for this upcoming event.
“We’ve had this idea for a while,” Vaughn said. “When that grant opportunity presented itself, we thought it was perfect and jumped on it.”
“We were able to get the grant money, and we were so excited,” she said. “We’re very grateful to the entire group over there who made this possible.”
GLA has three service centers, including one in Greer.
“We are located in the Bonds Center in Greer on the top floor,” Vaughn said. “We want people to come in, see what our centers look like, meet some of our tutors, meet our program managers, find out more about what we do, but also we wanted to connect with the community of Greer, the employers, potential small business owners, people that might be interested in what we do for a different reason. Maybe they want to send their employees to get their GEDs or help their employees learn how to speak English and maybe they want to collaborate with us and share services, which is something that we love doing and have done with many organizations in the past and continue to do.”
“We have lots to offer, we think,” she said. “We are excited about collaborating, and we hope to have lots of people reaching out and hope to be reaching out to a lot of people in the coming weeks.”
Anyone is welcome to attend the event, and any business is invited to partner with GLA.
“Most of our students, that get their GEDs, end up going on to Greenville Tech and end up either following a manufacturing or healthcare track,” Vaughn said. “That is not to say that we don’t have a multitude of things that our students go on to do. We’ve had students go on to become realtors; we’ve had students go on to become restaurant owners.”
“We really just want to get these people exposed to businesses and get the businesses exposed to what we’re doing for students,” she said. “We really want to make sure if someone’s, for any reason holding back, maybe they can’t use a computer or maybe they’re not sure what steps to take to start speaking to people about getting a job or interviewing for a job or maybe they don’t know how to dress for a job or don’t know how to act in a job interview. We really want to break those barriers down for them, so that’s really what this whole week is about and then of course letting those employers get right in the same room as people who are interested in working for them.”
The Greenville center is the largest and busiest, but GLA also has smaller centers in Greer and Simpsonville.
“We really feel that people aren’t aware of what we’re doing in those communities, so for a while now, we’ve been kind of looking at how we can make ourselves a little bit more visible in those communities and make sure that people know the services that we’re offering and are aware of all the opportunities they have to come and improve their lives,” Vaughn said.
“Each center does different class schedules,” she said. “Each center has a computer lab that students have access to, and the program managers are there for counseling and questions. We do have evening classes, but for services, it’s really the day hours.”
The Greer center is located at the J. Harley Bonds Resource Center at 505 North Main Street, Greer, and the hours are Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Wednesday, 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.; and Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For more information, visit greenvilleliteracy.org or call 355-3055.
kaelyn@greercitizen.com | 877-2076
