Ruth Johnson Colvin
| Ruth Johnson Colvin | |
|---|---|
Ruth Johnson Colvin with George W. Bush
|
|
| Born |
December 16, 1916 Chicago, Illinois United States |
| Education | Syracuse University - 1959 |
| Occupation | Founder of Literacy Volunteers of America, Inc. in 1962 known as ProLiteracy Worldwide since 2002 |
| Spouse(s) | Robert Colvin |
| Parent(s) | Lillian and Harry Johnson |
Ruth Johnson Colvin (born December 16, 1916) is the founder of the non-profit organization Literacy Volunteers of America, now called ProLiteracy Worldwide in Syracuse, New York, in 1962. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in December 2006. She turned 100 in December 2016.
Colvin was born Ruth Johnson in Chicago, Illinois, on December 16, 1916. She was the daughter of Lillian Johnson and Harry Johnson (1891–1929), a Swedish-American, and owner of a construction conglomerate in Chicago. She was eldest of five children.
She attended Thornton Junior College in Harvey, Illinois where she received a two-year degree. She also attended Moser Business College in Chicago and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she met her future husband, Robert Colvin, who was majoring in business administration at Northwestern. She also became a member of the Kappa Delta chapter. They married in 1940, moved to Seattle, Washington, then Syracuse, New York, where he built a "lucrative sales and consulting career" around industrial chemicals. Together, the couple had two children.
She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Syracuse University in 1959.
Colvin became aware of the problem of illiteracy in her hometown of Syracuse when the 1960 census reports were released and in 1962 she learned that the city had over 11,000 people functioning at the lowest level of literacy. Always an avid reader herself, she worked with reading specialists at Syracuse University and developed materials to train volunteer tutors various motivation and instruction techniques. She developed two tutor training manuals; Tutor and I Speak English which are considered to be authoritative sources for training volunteer tutors to teach adults basic literacy or English as a second language (ESL). The first tutors who completed the program were from Colvin's church women's group.
...
Wikipedia