The Juntos partnership in Holyoke, MA is one of the coalitions that resulted from the state community planning effort you mentioned, David.  With funding from the state, Juntos produced an initial Adult Basic Education Assets and Needs Statement in 1999 that examined the status of adult education in the community and found that more adult education services were needed by the large numbers of Holyoke’s adults with low literacy skills who were not being served.  

Juntos is a six-member partnership that provides adult basic education (ABE), adult secondary education, English language and literacy, college transition, computer and family literacy, and vocational training and job search services to adults.  The Juntos partners include the public school system’s Holyoke Adult Learning Opportunity Center (HALO), the ABE-to-College Transition and Mentor Program at Holyoke Community College, and four community organizations – the Community Education Project (CEP), the Community Adolescent Resource and Education (Care) Center, the New England Farmworkers Council, and the Massachusetts Career Development Institute (MCDI).

The following describes the roles of the partners:

- Holyoke Public Schools serves as lead agency, provides funding and in-kind support to Juntos, and operates the Holyoke Adult Learning Opportunities (HALO) Center. 

-CEP offers ESL, Native Language literacy in Spanish, an ABE-to-College Transition Program, and computer and family literacy classes.
 
-The Care Center offers education, GED preparation classes in English or Spanish, and support services to teenage mothers and their families.

-Holyoke Community College provides support for adult learners in making the transition from adult education to higher education through their Mentor Program. The program enlists former ABE students who have successfully moved on to college to serve as mentors to current ABE/ESL/GED students.
 
-The New England Farmworkers Council provides adult education, ESL, and workplace skills instruction in Spanish and English.  
 
-MDCI offers ABE, ESL, vocational training, job placement, and counseling services.

The coordinators from each of the six organizations serve as the main governance structure of Juntos.  They work together to develop the partnership’s approach to funding, community planning, service coordination, and staff and program development. An advisory council representing a variety of key education and workforce development organizations, including the local school board, the One-Stop Center, local employers, the Chamber of Commerce, UMASS’s University without Walls, a social services and childcare agency, current and former adult learners, and the partners, help with long-term community planning. The council also advises Juntos on issues such as workforce development and accountability.  

Adult education services also are no longer duplicated; the partners have streamlined their course offerings, identified gaps in services, and added new courses to fill the gaps.  Each provider has its niche; they are complementary rather than competitive.  Juntos publishes a course schedule that includes all the classes offered by each partner.  Learners can make a natural progression from one program to the next, depending on their needs and goals.  In 2002, the year before the Community Partnerships for Adult Learning (C-PAL) project visited them, the partners were able to offer 250 spaces for adults in need of adult education services, an increase of 100 percent since the partnership began.

The partners found that eligibility requirements for grants often favor partnerships. Since the formation of Juntos, the partner organizations have been more successful in attracting funding, especially grant money. Rather than starting from scratch when writing grant proposals, they have the information gathered for the community Assets and Needs Statement available to give them a better understanding of what the community needs.  During the late 1990’s when Massachusetts’ statewide ABE programs experienced an overall loss of approximately 10 percent in public funding, due to economic conditions, Holyoke’s ABE system actually experienced an increase in both public and private investment.

Each partner has different community connections that it brings to Juntos.  As a result, the partnership is linked to a wider range of community residents, organizations, service providers, educational institutions, businesses, and government officials than it would be without each partner’s connections.  In addition, the partnership has gained increased visibility and support within Holyoke because of its advisory council.  Council members can reach people in the city and state with whom the partners individually might not have much contact.

This information is taken from C-PAL’s Juntos partnership profile.  If you’d like to read the full report, go to http://www.c-pal.net/profiles/massachusetts.html and click on either the html or pdf versions.  

Hope that subscribers to the list from Juntos will update us on  how the partnership has grown and changed since our visit.

Kathy Chernus






On Tuesday, June 26, 2007 3:35 PM, David J. Rosen <djrosen1 at comcast.net> wrote:

>Community Literacy Discussion Colleagues,

>

>I hope we have many more examples -- and in detail -- of community 

>literacy coalitions, partnerships, and planning efforts.

>

>I hope that some members of the community planning efforts in 

>Massachusetts might talk about their planning coalitions.  Several years 

>ago the Massachusetts Department of Education launched and funded a 

>multi-year adult and family literacy community planning effort in 

>communities across the state.  I participated in the effort in Boston 

>for several years, where "community" was broken down into 

>"neighborhoods" as well as the city as a whole.  Across the state, if 

>programs wanted to be funded by the Department of Education they had to 

>work with other adult literacy education (including ESOL) programs and 

>with other stake holders such as libraries, corrections, business and 

>labor, to produce a community plan for adult and family literacy.  All 

>the stake holders had to sign on to the statement of needs and the 

>statement of community assets to address the needs. Every community had 

>to produce an action plan with concrete steps. In some neighborhoods 

>programs began to work closely together to address the gaps, not merely 

>to develop referral agreements but to develop shared co-funding 

>agreements to offer a community system of services. In some places this 

>introduced a new level of organization for literacy -- the community 

>level --  that  was driven by community needs for literacy rather than 

>for needs as interpreted by a single program.  This has been a lot of 

>work --- and the funding was essential to make it successful.  I also do 

>not know how well the effort has been sustained over the years.  I hope 

>my Massachusetts colleagues who are involved in community literacy 

>coalitions might join in to add their perspectives.

>

>David J. Rosen

>djrosen at comcast.net

>

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-- 
Kathy Chernus
Director, Adult Education and Literacy
MPR Associates, Inc.
2401 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Suite 410
Washington, DC 20037
202/478-1027 x 102
www.mprinc.com