History

1972: Birth of an Agency

A small group of dedicated volunteers officially formed Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford on September 27, 1972.  Based at Asylum Hill Congregational Church, the first year’s entire operating budget was just $3,600.  The all-volunteer staff focused on recruiting and training volunteer tutors, who served an impressive 116 Basic Literacy students in the first year.   One-on-one tutoring took place at a variety of community sites: churches, libraries, community centers, local corporations like CIGNA, Aetna, and Hartford Hospital- even city parks!

1973

LVGH hits a national record for the number of volunteers serving 100 hours or more. From the very beginning, our tutor retention rate has always been above the national average.

1975

Responding to a critical need in the Hartford community for people from other countries to learn to speak, read, and write English, LVGH adds English as a Second Language tutoring to its programming.

1980: A Time of Growth and Change, Searching for a Home Base

Throughout the ‘80s, LVGH expanded throughout the Hartford community, hired its first paid staff, transitioned from one-on-one to small group tutoring, and opened its first computer lab. Adjusting to these changes, LVGH moved around to several different homes during this time, including Asylum Hill Congregational Church, Moylan School, SAND, 110 Washington Street, the YWCA, and St. John’s Church. LVGH couldn’t have grown into what it is today without the early collaboration of these other organizations.

1986

“It’s opening up a new life for me, something I kept hidden for a long time. I feel very confident now that I can pick up a book and read it and know what it is saying.”

– Sam Robinson, Basic Literacy student, Bloomfield

1990: Engaging Students and the Community

The ‘90s were a time of in-depth student and community involvement. LVGH operated multiple program sites at libraries, schools, and community centers throughout Greater Hartford, in addition to the work at our Hartford Center. Greater efforts were made to recruit tutors from the neighborhoods being served. Students were active in literacy awareness campaigns and organized several fundraising events throughout these years.

1995

After several location changes over the years, LVGH moves to 30 Arbor Street, finally establishing a permanent home base in which to grow and thrive.

2000: Hitting Our Stride

The first decade of the new century found LVGH in a strong, stable place – the perfect time to reflect on the past and strategize for the future. After years of operating as many as 12 community sites at a time, LVGH streamlined operations to just three community sites in Hartford, Bloomfield, and East Hartford. This resulted in improved coordination and evaluation of services, a greater variety of programming, and a strengthened sense of community.

2005

After 13 years of service to the agency, Susan Roman retires from LVGH.  CJ Hauss is appointed as the new Executive Director.

LVGH partners with the Wickham Library in East Hartford to open a satellite Reading Center there, expanding our service region to include not only East Hartford but also the surrounding towns of Bolton, Ellington, Glastonbury, Manchester, South Windsor, Tolland, Rockville, and Vernon. LVGH grows to serve nearly 600 students per year.

2012

In 2012, LVGH celebrated 40 years of serving Greater Hartford, and is now recognized as the premier community-based literacy organization in the region.  While we’ve come a long way since 1972, adult literacy remains a major issue of concern for our community. We continue to grow; for the first time ever, we served over 700 students in 2011-2012.  As we look to the future, LVGH is poised to fully realize its developing role as a leader of adult education in the region, and we continue to explore ways to build our capacity so that we can reach more adults in our community.  

2020: The COVID-19 pandemic

In 2020, like the rest of the world, LVGH faced unprecedented challenges when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. We sadly but briefly closed our doors, gave ourselves, our tutors, and our students a crash course on Zoom, and then re-opened that summer for limited in-person instruction. We struggled through several years of waves, going back and forth between in-person and online classes. Our student population shrank, and then grew again. We found a silver lining in online instruction, discovering that it works better for certain higher-level classes like Book Club and Math and even eliminates certain attendance barriers like sickness and childcare, and still utilize it for a portion of class offerings to this day.

2022: 50th Anniversary

In 2022, Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford celebrated our 50th Anniversary. LVGH is so proud to have reached this milestone, and we acknowledge that we could never have done so without the support of our community.

After starting as a volunteer, then serving as Assistant Director, Stephen Morris has taken over as Executive Director. LVGH still serves the majority of its students at 30 Arbor Street in Hartford, but also offer classes at Wickham Memorial Library in East Hartford. Our literacy classes, career counseling, citizenship preparation, and more services continue to prove imperative and invaluable to our community.

Together, we've spent fifty years changing the lives of Greater Hartford residents through the power of literacy, and we can only hope to spend fifty more.