Debbie McCarthy

Chapel Hill, NC     So, yeah, I had the idea for the Augustine Literacy Project, way back in 1993. But I was working full-time and then I had a baby, and this great idea limped along for several years. What I really want credit for is that I chaired the new director hiring committee that hired Debbie McCarthy. Good ideas don't just take flight all by themselves; they need someone who can make them soar.

And that would be Debbie. The Augustine Literacy Project is designed to give low-income kids the same quality of literacy tutoring that someone with financial resources might receive at the Hill Center or through a private tutor. The repercussions of illiteracy are staggering, and they continue for generations. Breaking that chain can literally save lives. The ALP addresses this need, one tutor at at time, and one child at a time. The number of volunteer tutors trained are in the hundreds, as are the children served this area and others.

Debbie serves as Executive Director of the Augustine Project in Chapel Hill, the "mother" program that has spun off several replications throughout North Carolina, in South Carolina, and in Texas. She holds twice a year 70 hour trainings for volunteer tutors, alternating between Chapel Hill and Durham, as well as working with the directors of our replication programs. She also oversees two training programs of high school students in local private schools that provide opportunities for service learning for those students. Debbie is the mother of two dyslexic children, now grown and very successful in their fields, so she knows what can happen if a child gets the help he or she needs. She is that rare mixture of a very creative yet organized person, and she brings a passion to her work that is awe-inspiring. I decided to ask her where that comes from:

My friend, Linda, has asked me to write about why I feel so passionately about the Augustine Project.  As I’ve pondered the question, faces come to mind.  The face of Tyrone, my own Augustine student, a sweet, befuddled nine-year-old boy whose back story would buckle your knees.  He could not read a word in fourth grade, but even then, he was the single most responsible person in the daily lives of his five siblings.  Today, twelve years later, he is about to graduate from a Job Corps training program and head out into the world as a productive human being.  Then comes Enrique, an adorably charming first grader at Forest View School whose beautifully expressive face revealed with heart-breaking clarity the anxiety and shame he felt at not being able to read like his classmates.  After months of phonological games and activities (rhyming, hopscotch, bean bags and koosh balls, pictures and toy objects in a drawstring bag, “What’s the first sound you hear in bug…in car…in table?”) the truth dawned in his extremely bright mind:  the English language is made of SOUNDS.  You can tap the sounds apart, smear them together, swoop them into WORDS.  Connect the sounds to LETTERS and “Halleluia!” – written  language is no longer the insurmountable beast, the enemy.  The smile on Enrique’s face as he began to read was a sight I will never forget.  Then there are faces of tutors, committed and compassionate, eager yet apprehensive as training begins, overwhelmed as it continues, and finally confident and joyful as the tutoring takes hold in their lives and the lives of their Augustine students.  The faces of replicators, inspiring and inspired tutors who carry the torch to a new community and bring to light there “the magic” of Orton-Gillingham (of course it happens not magically at all, but through patience and perseverance, through the hard work of structured, systematic, multi-sensory, diagnostic and prescriptive lesson planning).   The faces of trainers and practicum coaches who convene year after year to carry on the work; the faces of donors whose generosity knows no bounds; the faces of board members who faithfully lead; the face of Linda who started it all; the faces of Tracey and Katherine and Heather who have so graciously shouldered with me the harness called “staff;” the faces of Timothy and Clarke, priests of Holy Family Church, where the Project was founded and still resides. Finally, the faces of our own two wonderful, twice exceptional (both gifted and dyslexic) children, now successful adults, who first opened my eyes to the truth that literacy does not always come with ease.  All of these faces are an amazing testimony to the power of the Augustine Literacy Project and its remarkable 18 year track record of teaching at-risk students to read, whether they struggle because of dyslexia, poverty, ESL issues or all three combined.   

I am so blessed to have found in the Augustine Project my professional vocation, which in Frederick Buechner’s words, is “where your own deep joy meets the world’s deep need.”

It should be said that, while the Augustine Project is an outreach ministry of Holy Family Church, the curriculum and instruction offered by Augustine tutors is secular.  We teach economically and academically disadvantaged students in the public school setting to read, write and spell.  Augustine tutors do not proselytize.  Augustine tutors affirm the dignity of every human being by providing compassionate attention and effective literacy intervention without regard to or judgment of an individual’s religious, cultural or personal characteristics.  It should also be said that, from my perspective, the work, the service, the relationships born of the Augustine Project are incarnations of the sacred, enacted on holy ground. 

The Augustine Project has many needs.  They always need tutors – caring, conscientious volunteers who will give up two weeks to be trained and then 60 hours (minimum) of teaching time, paired one-on-one with a low-income, struggling reader.  We always need funders.  Books and materials for a single trainee cost $300, and more and more trainees need scholarship help.  We need a replicator to rise up and start an Augustine chapter in Greensboro.  We need prayers that the Project will continue to thrive and grow.  

I'm on the board of this great endeavor and encourage you to learn more about it. If you want to become an Augustine tutor, make a donation, or just learn more about the ALP, visit  www.augustineproject.org or contact Debbie McCarthy at 919-408-0798 or  augustineproject@msn.com.  

One last word from Debbie: If you have actually read all of this, thank you…and thank God that you know how to read.   

And to that I say, Amen!