History
In 1965, in Florida, Mary Yardumian heard a speech by Frank Laubach, the well-known literacy educator. She was inspired to become a literacy volunteer and soon afterwards began teaching near her home.
In 1971, after moving to Pittsburgh, she found no volunteer literacy program in Allegheny County or in nearby counties. She began training volunteers in the region and helped at least twelve new programs get started.
In 1976 Mrs. Yardumian founded Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council with a group of volunteers from the Pittsburgh area. She ran the organization from her home.
By 1981 the demand for instruction was too great for Mrs. Yardumian and her volunteers to handle. A long-range planning committee recommended that the Council become a non-profit corporation and that it establish a Board of Directors, an office, and a professional staff.
In 1982 GPLC was incorporated and moved into an office in the East Liberty Branch of the Carnegie Library. The first two staff members were hired in 1984, and the following year the first area site was established on the North Side of the city.
Since that time the organization has grown rapidly. The Council’s professional staff has grown to forty-three full-time employees. Neighborhood-based programming has continued to develop, and today there are twelve area offices in school districts, churches, and social agencies. GPLC’s services have greatly expanded and now include all of the programs listed under Our Programs.
In 2006 GPLC’s staff and volunteers provided services to 3,000 students. Six hundred volunteers participated in GPLC programs that year.
In 2004 the Pittsburgh Board of Education closed its large adult literacy program at Connelley Technical Institute. The Board and the Pennsylvania Department of Education looked to GPLC to provide services for the 1,000 students who were displaced by the closing. As a result GPLC opened its Downtown Center in January 2005. The Center houses seven classrooms, a computer lab, tutoring areas, and offices. GPLC increased the number of full-time professional instructors on its staff. It was no longer an agency where one-to-one tutoring by volunteers was the primary method of delivering services. It delivered classes in a variety of formats and schedules to meet student needs.
In 2006 GPLC became the parent organization for a national project entitled Literacy*AmeriCorps. This means that GPLC runs a program that operates in six cities around the country, providing full-time national service workers to dozens of literacy programs.
GPLC has been recognized with the following awards, among others:
- Wishart Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management – given by the Forbes Funds, a supporting organization of The Pittsburgh Foundation (2002).
- Q-Stamp award from the PA Department of Education for continuous quality improvement (2003).
- Seal of Excellence from the Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations for completion of the Standards for Excellence certification program (2007).
- GPLC’s director was named the leading administrator of adult basic education in the nation – an award from the Commission on Adult Basic Education (2007).
