Adult Community Education loves print--afterall, we teach reading! We print a quarterly newsletter to let our supporters know how we spending their money. We highlight our learners, our fundraisers and our tutors in these print materials, and we usually receive donations as a result of sending out the newsletter.

We also print flyers and posters for classes we hold in conjunction with other organizations in our county, like Workforce or the library. These flyers let the community know when and where they can participate in our free classes and events. We also print training manuals for our tutors, worksheets for our students and direct mail letters to our donors. And we print invitations to our biannual Trivia fundraiser, a community favorite!

Over the past two years, we have tried switching some of our correspondence to email to save on printing costs. While this has saved money, there are some people who don't use email or who prefer direct mail for newsletters. In addition, we believe print mail is an important symbol for a literacy organization. Seeing and reading printed words on a page is a skill many take for granted, but at Adult Community Education, we often work with people who are illiterate, or barely literate. In that context, reading is a privilege. And for our older population, print matter is much easier to deal with than trying to navigate a computer, tablet or phone.

For these reasons, we would greatly prefer the print option whenever possible. If cost was not a limiting factor, we would print more posters advertising what we do, which is help people get their GEDs, offer English as a Second Language classes, teach computer skills and provide a space to use computers, printers, and phones.

Our tutors could also print out material for their students. We could offer classes that include printing options--like making zines.

If we could print large posters, we could put positives messages about adult learning in public places around the county. We know there is a fair percentage of our county's illiterate population who don't know we exist. We would love to serve more people, but we have to reach them first.

As a small, community non-profit, we are used to making do with what is available. So if we had the option to use more print matter, I am sure that between us, our tutors, our students and our supporters, we could find a lot of creative ways to use print matter to improve literacy of all types in our county.

We often offer short classes based on expressed interest of community members. In the past we have offered Spanish classes, music theory, financial literacy and sign language. If we had more print availability, I am sure we could offer some amazing classes, from art classes, to business classes. We could send letters to community members, including prisoners. We could collaborate with the local art center or the schools to send letters, make books and games, and assist in areas that have experienced disasters.