Literacy

SUIT UP, friends. The growing anti-#PhillyShrug™ army is heading out. The campaign kicked off last month with a custom T-shirt made by my pals at Airtime Airbrush in the Gallery at Market East. (Have you gotten your T-shirt yet? Twenty five bucks and you're official.) Pockets of non-shruggers all over the city have stepped up to join: Community groups who fought off projects they didn't think were right for their neighborhoods. College students who've identified the same pervasive apathy and are determined to change it. Prisoners who have written me about their plans to dump the Philly Shrug that they partly blame for their troubles.

Vice President Gore cut the ribbon at the $522 million Pennsylvania Convention Center June 26, opening the doors to a new era for the region's service industry. Thousands of primary and secondary job opportunities will be generated by the year 2000 for Philadelphia residents. Local companies are anxious to fill vacant positions with individuals who can hit the ground running. There is no substitute for experience. Communication, problem-solving and team-building skills take years to develop.

Hundreds of people were listening to a lunchtime jazz band at JFK Plaza yesterday, and dozens were laughing at the mimes - and then there was the guy over in the corner all by himself, urging people to read. One Penn student thought Phil Yeh was a street person. Blue-suited businessmen dodged Yeh's pamplets pleading for a literate America. It's not easy wiping out illiteracy, said Yeh, a California cartoonist who is traveling the land, stabbing with his pen at ignorance. You can't go up to people and say literacy any more than you can go up and say, "Boo!"

To end the cycle of illiteracy and crime, the Riverside Clinics Inc., in conjunction with Bucks County Community College in Newtown Township, will offer general equivalency diploma or literacy tutoring. The voluntary program, which begins next month, is designed to reduce the recidivism rate. "Studies have shown, without a doubt, that lack of job or training opportunities will limit a person's ability to continue to avoid substance abuse or criminal activity," said Jeanne Dalton, president of the private clinic based in Langhorne.

Regardless of the outcome, the Cherry Hill mayoral election was an enormous disservice to voters. The negative campaign practices were exceeded in their repulsion only by the apparent lack of literacy evident in full-page advertising and flyers. We were assaulted by advertising that offered vague references framed by syntactic errors, completely unpredictable capitalization, and what can only be described as linguistic abuse. Who are these people, and why don't they speak English?

Wednesday is Day of 1,000 Stars at the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr. As part of the celebration for National Library Week, the school will host guest readers who will read selected stories and poetry to students in kindergarten through grade 12. Children from the day-care center at the school will also participate. Judy Young, director of libraries at the school, said the way to conquer illiteracy is to introduce reading at a young age. She said the program, which is sponsored by the American Library Association, is intended to focus attention on family literacy by having read-aloud sessions.

Theresa Thorpe's spacious kindergarten classroom in Camden's Early Childhood Development Center is a blizzard of words. There's hardly a blank space on the walls. Everything is labeled, from the computers ("computer #1" to "computer #4") to the supply bins where "paper" and "lined paper" each have a place. The front wall is covered by maps, a calendar and a "word wall": Under each letter of the alphabet is a list of common words beginning with that letter. The children's drawings and writing dominate one corner.

Thomas S. Jacoby, once the boss of city scholastic sports, has a new role: Helping to connect "the people of the book" in the local Jewish community with inner-city kids who need help with reading and books. Jacoby helped to launch the Philadelphia Jewish Coalition for Literacy yesterday at a City Hall session attended by several dozen Jewish leaders who braved drenching rains to attend. He's the perfect link: president of the Jewish Community Relations Council and two-day-a-week volunteer at Philadelphia Reads, the city's literacy agency.

Former Netscape Communications Corp. chief executive James Barksdale joined an exclusive club of Internet philanthropists yesterday with a $100 million donation to promote literacy in Mississippi. Barksdale, who amassed the lion's share of an estimated $700 million fortune at the helm of California-based Netscape, maker of a popular Internet browser, said the gift would fund a University of Mississippi institute aimed at promoting reading programs for young children. Mississippi, home to some of the worst poverty in the United States, has the highest basic illiteracy rate in the country, according to U.S. government statistics.

They asked if she was famous, and whether she was mobbed walking down the street. Did she live the life of a celebrity? Has she ever met Hammer? As the wife of Pennsylvania's governor, Ellen Casey is used to such probing questions - especially from children. But "I'm not that important," Casey told fourth graders at Norristown's Gotwals Elementary School during a visit Friday to promote literacy. She explained that she had never met the rap star and that she usually rode in a station wagon.

WHENEVER I URGE people to stop being serial auto-loan consumers, I get bewildered looks. I mean it. Pay cash for your car and make the math work in your favor. I get that you might not be able to get off the car-loan circuit right away. But once you pay off one car loan, continue making the payments - but to yourself. The average length of vehicle ownership for a new car has increased to nearly six years, according to R.L. Polk & Co., which owns the used-car history provider Carfax.

TODAY, THERESA Kellenbenz is reading this column. Until recently, this is something the 65-year-old great-grandmother could not do. "I can read words now, books. " Kellenbenz, a wisp of a woman, glows when she says this. "I've read about 15 books. Not real high books, but I read them. " That would be a big enough accomplishment for anyone. But as nurturing grandmothers tend to do, Kellenbenz wanted her family to share in her success. So, shortly after starting the literacy tutoring program last year at the Lutheran Settlement House in Fishtown, Kellenbenz encouraged her 46-year-old daughter, Dawn Marston, to join.

SUNDAY Seventh annual Richard's River Run 5K, 9 a.m. at Cooper River Park, Pennsauken. Go4theGoal will host.   Long Branch Half Marathon, Long Branch, N.J. njmarathon.org   Bucks County 10-miler, Washington Crossing. runbucks.com SATURDAY Rock N' Run 4 Kids, 5K & kids fun run. Coca-Cola Park, Allentown. rocknrun4kids.com Elwyn 5K, on Elwyn's campus, 111 Elwyn Rd., Elwyn 9 a.m. 610-891-2298. 34th Great Cape May Footrace, Beach Ave. & Stockton Place, 8 a.m. active.com NEXT SUNDAY 23d annual Komen Philadelphia Race for the Cure, at Eakins Oval/Philadelphia Museum of Art. 5K, 8:15 a.m. Information and registration: komenphiladelphia.org MAY 18 Fallen Heroes 5k Run and 1-mile family walk.

Invest in a flash-mob antidote Time is running out for the current generation of children enrolled in underperforming city schools. We cannot be satisfied with the current 57 percent high school graduation rate - a significant number of whom are graduating at eighth-grade reading and math levels. We cannot be satisfied that only 10 percent of all Philadelphia public school students will graduate from college. What future will these children have? The good news is that Philadelphia-area businesses - both large and small - can change the course of an economically disadvantaged child, family, and community at little or no cost.

SUIT UP, friends. The growing anti-#PhillyShrug™ army is heading out. The campaign kicked off last month with a custom T-shirt made by my pals at Airtime Airbrush in the Gallery at Market East. (Have you gotten your T-shirt yet? Twenty five bucks and you're official.) Pockets of non-shruggers all over the city have stepped up to join: Community groups who fought off projects they didn't think were right for their neighborhoods. College students who've identified the same pervasive apathy and are determined to change it. Prisoners who have written me about their plans to dump the Philly Shrug that they partly blame for their troubles.

A LEJANDRO Gac-Artigas, 24, of Center City, wants to eradicate the literacy gap among Philly's schoolchildren. Two years ago, the Harvard grad and then-first-grade teacher at Pan American Academy Charter School founded the nonprofit Springboard Collaborative to run a summer-reading program. This summer, Springboard expects to have 960 students in the program.   Q: What's your background? A: From 2009 to 2011, I taught 34 students literacy and social studies. I also got a master's degree at night from the School of Graduate Education at Penn and I was tapped for Wharton's Venture Initiation Program.

City of Chester officials will announce today that the city has received a grant to support a financial literacy course for the city's summer youth program. The $4,000 DollarWise Grant Award, from the the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, will support a six-week paid internship for Chester youths. The program is designed to provide hands-on work experience and professional development. There is also a financial educational component. Chester officials and those from four other cities - Wichita, St. Louis, Kokomo, IN and Richmond, VA - learned they were awarded the grant at the U.S. Conference of Mayors this past January.

On Saturday mornings for the last few months, Wharton professor Keith Weigelt has taught West Philadelphia residents - they call him Mr. Keith - about money, earning, saving, investing. For many students, this was the first time they learned about mutual funds. "White households have 20 times the amount of median wealth as black households," says Weigelt, 61. "We're trying to reduce the wealth gap by teaching financial literacy. I had this woman in tears telling me that, for the first time, she feels she can get out of poverty.

IF YOU'VE been thinking about getting your GED and you're not too good with computers, then get a move on. Effective January 2014, the high-school equivalency test will be more rigorous and entirely computerized, requiring a level of digital fluency that education advocates here say could hinder many test-takers. The GED was last revised in 2002, but for its next incarnation the test will be overhauled by a magnitude never before seen in its 70-year existence. Last year, the American Council on Education, which manages the test nationwide, partnered with a computer-based testing company to develop an assessment that they believe will better prepare students for modern workplace demands.

One reader's idea: "I always keep a children's book in my backpack, and have given out about 20 or so on the train ride home. "Any time I see someone with a child, I just casually hand him or her a book - no big deal, no real thanks needed. "If we could just get people to put an extra book in their bag and practice a 'random act of literacy' during their commute, think of the number of books you would put in the hands of kids. "Simple, anonymous, and enjoyable!