DETROIT — “Literacy in Detroit: Be the Solution,” a fall workshop hosted by the Detroit Jewish Coalition for Literacy (DJCL) featuring Pamela Good, president and executive director of Beyond Basics, will be held from 10 a.m. to noon on Nov. 2 at the Max M. Fisher Federation Building in Bloomfield Hills.
DJCL has joined with Beyond Basics to help at-risk children in Detroit and the metro area develop fundamental education skills. Good will discuss how Beyond Basics, which serves thousands of inner-city children annually in Detroit, is getting kids reading at grade level in six weeks with one-on-one tutoring. DJCL is working in concert with Beyond Basics by recruiting volunteers to be weekly “reading buddies” for Beyond Basic’s students in Detroit Public Schools. Good and the Beyond Basics program have been featured on Dateline and in two Forbes articles, as well as numerous local new papers, television and radio programs.
An entrepreneur at heart, Good started her first business at the age of 19. After years in the workforce, she volunteered to help with a coat drive benefitting the students attending a Detroit public school. The experience opened her eyes to the vast deficiencies in public education. She began working with the schools to bring the arts to the children, but in the course of doing so found that many had trouble reading at grade level. These efforts led Pamela to become the cofounder and executive director of Beyond Basics, a non-profit organization that helps children in metro Detroit public schools.
Beyond Basics provides opportunities for children in struggling communities to develop fundamental educational skills. The work done by Beyond Basics staff and volunteers has been proven to help school children in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods change their destinies by significantly raising their reading proficiency scores and providing developmental and emotional growth opportunities. They have done this work for more than a decade in several schools in the DPS system.
