All the ingredients were present for a few special hours last week at Sesquicentennial Park: bright sun, colorful balloons, good food, music-and helping others.
The park was the site of the eighth annual “Picnic in the Park for Literacy” to benefit the Adult Literacy Volunteer Project of Waubonsee Community College.
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The success of the benefit could be read in the smiles of the more than 120 people who visited during the two-hour benefit, lounging as they munched their turkey sandwich lunches and listened to the college’s Faculty Jazz Quartet.
“We wanted to support the program because they help a lot of our clients,” said Bruce Leclere, who attended the picnic with Mary Heneghan, who are caseworkers in the Illinois Department of Public Aid’s Aurora office.
“It’s kind of nice to get involved in something a little positive that’s going to help somebody, instead of always thinking about negative things,” Leclere said. “These are people who are trying to help themselves and get some education, some training and you know they’re not going to be on public aid forever and ever. And that’s cool, that’s what we want.”
The project sold more than 380 of the preordered $7 boxed lunches. Lunches also were delivered by volunteers to eight area companies. They were prepared by ARA Catering of Aurora.
Proceeds help to fill in the financial gaps in the nine-year-old volunteer tutor program not covered by any of its federal, state or private grants, said Connie Dickson, adult literacy coordinator at the college.
The program recruits and trains volunteers to teach adults to read and speak English as a supplement to the college’s Adult Basic Education and English as a Second Language program, she said.
“Adult students who are at 3rd grade level or below are placed one-on-one with a volunteer tutor,” Dickson said. “Some also are placed in the classroom for students who are reading at 4th grade level or higher but have uneven English skills. They may understand and speak English fairly well but don’t read or write well, or the reverse.”
“It’s an excellent program,” said Zaida Chapa, an administrative assistant at the Hollywood Casino, who lunched with several co-workers at the park, enjoying one of the 100 lunches the casino bought for its employees.
“It’s for a good cause so even if it hadn’t been free we would have come anyway,” she said, as her friends nodded in agreement.