Gabriel Villamil ’25 is one of 31 student fellows who completed research with a community-based organization in upstate New York this summer as a part of the Upstate Institute Summer Field School. He describes the project below in his own words:
A few years ago, in Cazenovia, it would have almost been unheard of that an ATM would have accessibility options for another language. When I heard this information from Literacy Coordinator Carla Zimmerman, I was certain that the work the Literacy Outreach Center for Madison County does is crucial to the adaptation of upstate New York to an increasingly diverse population. Hearing this story, I have transported back seven years ago as a new immigrant to the United States. I thought about how my family would have adapted to the United States knowing that there were educational services available to people from any background. I only found out recently that there are people out there, willing to help immigrants learn English.
The purpose of the Literacy Outreach Center for Madison (LOMCNY) is to provide free adult education, sponsored by libraries and fueled by voluntary tutors. Led for 12 years by Tara Truett, program director, this work spans GED, English as a New Language (ENL), and even basic education. My job this summer was to help this organization organize its social media and website, alongside teaching them how to use these tools.
The organization is spearheaded by three wonderful women: Tara Truett (see picture), program director, and literacy coordinators Carla Zimmerman and Donna Bocketti-Schaefer. Their job ranges from teaching students and taking event pictures to coordinating library outreach for these services. With a greater demand for their services in the Madison community, their jobs are becoming more difficult: Increasingly, American adults and immigrants in Upstate New York require more programs that offer accessible and convenient education. LOMCNY is the answer to this issue.
When I heard about the ATM story, I was transported back seven years ago, when I was a new immigrant in the U.S. I think about how useful and meaningful it would have been if my parents knew or were willing to learn English in a public library. Seven years ago, we were ostracized from America because we didn’t know and thought there was no one out there to teach us. Seven years after we came to this country with a dream of stability, peace, and growth, I discovered that there are communities of people who are happy to help people like my family.
As a fellow working LOMCNY, I pitched some small website redesigns involving accessibility for non-English speakers, made the organization website lomadisonny.org easier to find and more accessible, and even posted several inspirational posts on Facebook with students’ faces. Despite the relative success I found completing these tasks, a problem still remained. What will happen if I’m not there? I realized the real challenge was making this success sustainable. I figured that the best way to give my work longevity was making my process accessible and approachable to the organization’s leaders.
This last month, I have been creating guides on topics such as how to use chatGPT for social media captions or how to send a link in an email. Weekly, I have been getting together with Tara to discuss online tools such as Google Drive, Facebook, and Instagram. Though it might seem like small work, I believe that I am making a visible difference that I describe as media literacy. It is rather common that many online services specifically designed to be accessible and intuitive can seem unapproachable to people who don’t understand or have the time or resources. I seek to connect these people to these tools and hopefully prove that knowledge is not a one-size-fits-all, but rather a personal process, full of different learning styles, cognitive abilities, and comprehension skills.
I hope to utilize these teaching abilities to help incoming students feel welcome and at home in the overwhelming campus environment. Hopefully, I can translate my ability to adapt to different environments in order to produce information in a way that can be more accessible, more like everyone.