Oakland Literacy Coalition: Champions for Literacy in Oakland

Oakland Literacy Coalition believes in a future where every Oakland child has the literacy skills necessary to thrive in school and life. Serving as an independent hub for Oakland’s literacy efforts, Oakland Literacy Coalition is amplifying the work of literacy organizations by resourcing the field with dollars, action grants, and capacity building. 

As a champion for literacy, Oakland Literacy Coalition mobilizes the city’s rich diversity of service providers to work more effectively. The organization provides opportunities to learn, obtain critical information about the field, and call attention to urgent needs and opportunities for action as a unified voice. Oakland Literacy Coalition founding co-director, Cassie Perham, explains, “we need to make sure as a city we are talking about literacy all the time in all of the places and constantly engaging stakeholders around literacy.” 

 Oakland Literacy Coalition has been a key partner in supporting Eat. Learn. Play.’s Learn pillar. Together, we have amplified and accelerated the number of books distributed to Oakland kids, action grants provided to teachers, and opportunities for learning and connecting at their recent literacy symposium. 

“How do we leverage what works? We know that teachers have a lot of ability and skill. We know that families want what's best for their kids. And we know that kids are not the problem.”

-Oakland Literacy Coalition founding co-director, Sanam Jorjani

To ensure we have a diverse selection of books for each grade level and in multiple languages, the Oakland Literacy Coalition team curates all the books distributed to kids through our Little Town Libraries and Eat. Learn. Play. Bus. They help to staff our book distributions—matching kids and families with the best books for their reading level, and sharing literacy resources, including their newly launched website for parents and community partners: Oakland Reads. 

Eat. Learn. Play. was proud to be a presenting partner at Oakland Literacy Coalition’s 2nd Annual Literacy & Justice for All Symposium this past October. A convening of literacy organizations and educators from Oakland and throughout the state, the symposium was an opportunity to highlight the many voices of the literacy ecosystem and share effective strategies, approaches, and tools to address the literacy needs in Oakland. 

As the Oakland Literacy Coalition heads into 2023 they will continue championing literacy efforts in Oakland and identifying the issues impacting these efforts. “We know that kids aren’t the problem. These are systemic problems,” shares Oakland Literacy Coalition founding co-director, Sanam Jorjani. “When we’ve been doing things a certain way and an individual kid can’t keep up, we think we must fix that kid, but really, we must fix the system. So how do we stop problematizing the kid and instead fix the system?” We look forward to continuing our partnership with Oakland Literacy Coalition as they work to answer these questions, leverage learnings, provide tools for stakeholders, hold systems to task, and ensure that every Oakland child learns and loves to read.