CAIRO — Grady County Literacy Committee chair Nola Daughtry wants people to know the group is active in the community.

Daughtry listed off current challenges the committee is facing and the programs created to solve them at a recent meeting of the Grady County Board of Commissioners.

The committee chair said one area of concern was children in the range of 0 to 4 years.

“We have 26 certified childcares in our community,” Daughtry said. “Only six of them are quality rated.”

Additionally, Daughtry said more than 400 of the 1,700 children ages 0 to 4 in Grady County are not enrolled in childcare at all.

“That means they’re not getting ready for school by the time they’re 4 years of age going to Pre-K,” Daughtry said. “They’re getting home care, but we don’t know they’re getting ready (for school) at that point.”

Cortney O’Neal, program manager at the Thomasville Community Resource Center, assisted the committee in piloting a new parent-child home program as part of their efforts to deal with the issue.

The 23-week program, which is free for parents, offers 30-minute sessions twice a week in a home setting for children ages 16 to 36 months old.

“What we saw with the program is that it’s more for the parents than it is for the child,” O’Neal said. “It teaches the parent that they are their child’s first teacher.”

Each home visitor is trained by O’Neal for 16 hours. Home visitors bring an age-appropriate book and toy to their students each week.

Once inside a home, O’Neal said the visitors assess the child’s behavioral traits.

“Can the child clean up after themselves when we get finished with a session?” O’Neal said. “Can the child sit quietly? (These are) different things that we see the child is going to have to do when they enter school.”

The free program is set to officially begin September 2019 and will run concurrently with the school year.

Additionally, Daughtry said the committee was “alarmed” when it learned 8,794 people in Grady County do not have a high school education and 5,189 are considered illiterate.

“That means a lot of job opportunities aren’t out there for our people,” Daughtry said.

Daughtry said only 11 people received GEDs in Grady County in 2017 out of the more than 5,000 who were eligible.

To help rectify the issue, the committee stepped up efforts to make Southern Regional Technical College’s adult education and GED program more accessible.

Melissa Butler, director of adult education at Southern Regional Technical College, said free adult education is available at the school.

The adult education program serves individuals as young as 16 who have withdrawn from school. Butler said the oldest student in the program is 74.

Classes in reading, writing, science, social studies, math, basic computer skills, soft skills and English as a second language are available Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m.

Distance learning options are available for students who are unable to regularly transport to the school, though Butler said the option requires a computer.

Scholarships are available through the program to reduce or eliminate the cost of the GED test, which is normally $160.

Butler said aside from assisting adults in their education, the program has the added bonus of allowing parents to be more active with their children’s work in school.

“Our goal is to improve the literacy of our adults so they can in turn help their children with their homework and with their reading,” Butler said. “Especially if they cannot read or speak English it’s imperative that they learn that so when those notes come home from school they can read those and understand what the children are needing to do.”

Daughtry added that the program can also help adults who need assistance improving their literacy skills but do not necessarily want or need a GED.

The literacy committee was formed when Daughtry, also the county family connection coordinator, noticed that the certified literacy program had been dormant for some time.

Family connection examined the program to determine ways to revive it, eventually forming the Grady County Literacy Committee.

Daughtry said the committee, which currently has around nine members, is making a positive impact in the county.

“There are several things that we are very proud of,” Daughtry said. “We should be proud of what’s going on because literacy is such an important issue in our community (and) for our economy. For our community to have thriving citizens we need literacy.”