Dear Sun Spots: Literacy Volunteers-Androscoggin urgently needs volunteers for all of our literacy programs. Winter is a great time to train for one of these opportunities and volunteers could really provide wonderful tools to others. Your volunteer hours will help increase literacy and really give others the skills to build better lives for themselves, their families and their children. Won’t you please be a part of improving lives?

We need:

• Basic literacy tutors to help upgrade the reading, writing, and math skills of participants in our programs. This includes those with very low skills all the way up to those who can read, but need to improve comprehension, spelling, and writing. We also have several adults who are developmentally disabled, who could use someone with patience to help them gain the literacy skills necessary for everyday life.

• Literacy tutors to work one-on-one with parents in our Knowledge as Power Family Literacy Program. Your volunteering time would help parents who are working on their high school diploma credits or are studying for the GED. Imagine how gratifying it would be to see the delight on the faces of those students who receive that diploma or credit. To think your efforts made such a difference in so many lives – the life of your student and those in their lives.

• Tutors for our English Language Learners who are working toward American citizenship, or need to improve their English reading and writing skills so they can get a decent job.

• English Conversation Partners, who meet with someone from another country for an hour per week to help them advance their English speaking skills. There is a one-hour training for partners that can be scheduled at your convenience. It could be a learning experience for both you and your partner as your lives are enriched by the experience of different cultures and traditions.

• A new director for our literacy theater troupe, The Center Stage Players. Actors in this program create skits based on material they have written about their literacy experiences. To observe one of these skits is to feel the heartbreak these actors have endured, living with minimal literacy skills. Most attend the Social Learning Center in Lewiston. A staff person from the Social Learning Center will be present to provide support, along with an advanced LV student, who assisted with last year’s theater project.

• Last but not least, a few patient individuals are needed to tutor inmates at the Androscoggin County Jail. The majority of these will be short-term assignments. If they are willing, we will match them with a long-term, one-on-one tutor after they have served their sentences. The tutors at the jail are there to get them started on their literacy journey, hoping that they will continue their education journey once they’re released.

The next tutor training workshops will held on Jan. 27 and Feb. 3, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Great Falls School in Auburn. If you are interested in any of the opportunities mentioned above, please give us a call at 753-1772 or e-mail me, Tahlia at tahlia@megalink.ner. We sure would love to hear from you and would be delighted if you can help enrich the lives of those struggling with reading, writing and comprehension skills as well as those – Tahlia, Auburn.

Dear Sun Spots: Where can I send away 35-mm one time use cameras to be developed? I can’t afford much. Thank you. – No Name, No Town.

Answer: Sun Spots would direct you to the film processing section at your local Hannaford, Shaw’s, CVS, Rite Aid or other such places. Typically, you fill out the form provided in the store and drop the camera and its film into the envelope for processing. Sun Spots has used this option often.

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