19% of Hartford County residents read at or below second-grade level. Here’s what one group is doing to change that.

When Emanuel “Manny” Chaney enlisted in the Navy, becoming an electrician’s mate, third class, he could barely read.

“I had a reading problem when I was in high school,” said Chaney, 56, a Hartford resident. “I didn’t know how bad it was until I came to the VA. And that’s what brought me here.”

“Here” was Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford, where Chaney now is in the advanced class of English to Speakers of Other Languages.

When he started, Chaney was one of the 19% of Hartford County residents who read at or below a second-grade level. That’s better than the national average of 22%.

In high school, “I just did enough to get by,” Chaney said. He also was good in math, which he said “was so superior and so easy.”

“I was good at electronics and good at math and on a math team and stuff like that,” he said. “So I figured out the other half. I never use calculators and all that.”

As for English, he would avoid asking questions and had people help him with his homework.

“And then my senior year when I graduated, I felt like I had a piece of paper, a diploma,” Chaney said. With a desire to serve his country, he joined the Navy, where they determined he was functionally illiterate and sent him to a reading program.

But he really advanced once he found Literacy Volunteers.

“The VA said, ‘Give this a try,’” Chaney said. “I’ve got nothing to lose.”

“So I came here, just gave it my all,” he said. “And the energy I got here from inside the building, it was outstanding. All the students help one another. And the staff help each other. So we felt like everybody was equal. … And we’re not going to let the other person fail. So we help each other.”

He began to be able to read about the ballerina Misty Copeland with his daughter, who’s now a student at the University of Hartford. He’s done so well that now “I can just pick up a Hartford Courant and I won’t go straight to the sports section and I can read it.”

Chaney gets ready for class by arriving an hour early, sitting in his car and getting “all the negative, everything out of my system because I’ve got a mission to come here at 6 o’clock and be ready to learn.”

Steve Morris, executive director of Literacy Volunteers, said of Chaney, “Here’s someone who not only has bettered himself by coming to this point … He helps with the youth in Hartford and is very much open about saying, I have a reading problem, but it’s not going to hold me back. Education is that important. He’s just a really good guy.”

Morris, executive director for almost a year, has been involved with the program for six and started as a volunteer.

“It’s fun to see people succeed,” he said. “And this is a population that is routinely kind of overlooked, but such a critical segment of our local population in terms of filling jobs and advancing them.”

Morris said a lot of “the things that plague our society,” such as incarceration, poor health care, lack of jobs, poverty, “usually starts and stops with education, literacy being the foundation of that. So that’s where we come into play.” 

Much of society’s education focus is on kindergarten through high school, Morris said, “but what about their parents? What about people that fell through the cracks that need some help to move forward in life?

“We can’t really expect Greater Hartford to be the place we want it to be if … thousands of adults don’t have the literacy, the professional skills to move forward in their own lives or take advantage of opportunities,” he said.

Morris said Literacy Volunteers, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is “just scratching the surface” with more than 500 students last year and the same number halfway through the current school year. He expects to see 650 by the end of the year.

‘I can just pick up a Hartford Courant … and I can read it.’ — Manny Chaney

Besides teaching reading and practical issues like the rules of driving and how to shop for groceries, Literacy Volunteers has a Career Pathways Training Program.

“That’s essentially taking the skills that they’re gaining in their literacy classes and turning those into sustainable employment opportunities, livable-wage employment opportunities, help them build resumes,” Morris said. “We have connections with local employers.”

He said employers will call and ask if Literacy Volunteers has more people like the one they hired “because they’re so hard working.”

Diane Klingman, development director, said while the students start off illiterate in English, “They have a lot of skills, some of them coming from other countries who are accomplished tailors, or they’re teachers or economists or all these different jobs, and they come here and they’re starting from zero. And they have so much skill and so much knowledge to share.”

Another success story is Ousman Diarra of Hartford, who immigrated from Mali in 2000 and started at Literacy Volunteers in 2018. He started in the basic literacy class. In 2021, he became a U.S. citizen, taking his classes at Literacy Volunteers.

“A lot of things have changed in my life,” Diarra said. “I learn something new every day coming to the class. … They teach you how to be a member of society.”

Morris said Diarra, who drives a truck, “works basically seven days a week, owns an investment property in Hartford, is building his mother a house in Mali. Just the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. And it’s just a testament to how hard our students work.”

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.