Dear Friend,

Welcome and thank you for visiting!  In January 2010, I started creating a website for a new initiative, { We Speak America }, where I can engage openly about issues that have  been an integral part of my work life–the plight of disenfranchised adult learners in the U.S.  My goal is to create a social enterprise from the bottom up, by first understanding the needs of my target population–low-wage, low-skilled, and limited english proficient (LEP) workers, and then designing an on-learning learning platform that will address those needs, while harnessing the collective power of community for transformative social change.

The Working Life

I have spent most of my working life with adult learners.   In the U.S., we don’t really hear a lot about this world.    When the American media feature “education,” it is often about children.    Indeed, the challenges faced by educators in the K-12 system are gargantuan.   However, there is another world of education that includes millions of Americans who can’t read or write, or can’t speak English, or who have dropped out of K-12 for a whole gamut of issues (e.g. learning disabilities), or who are stuck in the revolving door of low-wage unemployment.   My day job is full of these wonderful learners.  Many of them are the parents of the very children caught in the achievement gap discourse.  We see them every day.

For over a decade, I have taught and organized programs for single mothers, high school drop-outs, women on welfare, ex-offenders, sweatshop workers, union workers, dislocated workers, and immigrants of all colors and issues.   I have also come face to face with their multiple barriers.   One student of mine, an African-American in his 50s, was clicking away on a phonics website designed for children, in order to learn highly inauthentic words such as frogs, princess, fairy.   There are no easy solutions for a very big problem.   There are 23 million Limited English Proficient (LEP) in the U.S.   Of this  population, only a little over a million are in federally-funded adult education and ESOL programs.  

I believe one type of innovation could offer some hope.  For many years, I have integrated computer-based technology into the adult literacy classroom, with hopes to provide 21st century skills to adult learners.   I saw the potential of technology in providing access to education and training for adult learners who are without the privilege of adult education classes.  Interestingly enough, a similar movement is happening in the K-12 sector.   Classrooms are migrating on-line as the digital generation demands a different learning methodology.   Indeed, the internet is becoming a life-force of its own, penetrating all aspects of our lives.   Unfortunately, technology is rarely discussed in the education and mobilization of adult learners.   Alberto Ibarquen, President and CEO of the Knight Foundation, summed it up when he said, “if you’re not digital, you’re a second class citizen.”

From Welfare to Harvard

After a decade managing workforce education and development programs for adult learners and four years in a classroom working directly with low-wage, low-skilled adult learners, I began to think about innovative technologies for this population.   I was the computer literacy instructor of over 120 adult learners on welfare in a given week, with each one presenting a different set of barriers to upward mobility.  I saw the excitement in their faces as they sat in front of their computers, grabbing the mouse to open  new learning pathways.   My students, of course, represented a minority of the adult learner population in the U.S.   As the broadband movement spreads across the country to include marginalized communities,  I envision internet-based innovative solutions that provide alternative forms of  work-based education to those not lucky enough to be in adult education classrooms.

From the epiphanic welfare program in New York City, I decided to pursue my vision at Harvard.  It was during my time as a graduate student in the Technology, Innovation, and Education program of the Ed. School and as a Reynolds Fellow in Social Enterpreneurship at the Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Public Leadership that I created a business plan around the advancement of immigrant workers in low-wage jobs.  The process coincided with courses I took in Strategic Non-profit Management, Curriculum Development, Financial Management, Program Evaluation, Emerging Technologies, and Business Planning.   I felt I needed to upgrade my skills and truly learn the best practices in my field.    Merging my years of practice and my newly acquired ideas is the next step of my education career.   Over the years, I have had many different perspectives on adult education, especially around issues facing Limited English Proficient (LEP) workers.   I hope to bring them together as I create { We Speak America }.

An Award-winning Business Plan

The business plan an integral part of my educational goal.   At Harvard, I was very honored to have met many humbling change agents who believe that singular forces can change the world.  With great support from my professors and cohorts in graduate school,  I honed the plan in two classes and dissected its components, challenges, impossibility, know-how, and doability.   My business plan placed third in the Harvard Education Enterprise Idea Competition, amongst 14 finalists.   

Moving forward, leveraging support for its creation would be the challenge, as Adult learners in the country are traditionally the underdogs of the education sector.   However, I do believe in the power of resilience and ambition.   I have many role models in social entrepreneurship, people who have managed to make a difference despite enormous setbacks and relative invisibility.  I am a big believer in the mobilization of communities and in bottom-up approaches in organizing.   I think we can move the digitally marginalized to the information superhighway, in pushcarts if we must.  

Personal is Political

In my work, there is a fine line between education and organizing.   I see them as interrelated, where the success of one is contigent upon the other.    My chosen vocation is also a highly personal one.   My life experiences inform many decisions I make in life, including professional ones.  I am an immigrant.  I have experienced poverty as a child.   My mother was once an adult learner.   By politicizing the personal, I share with you the source of my passion for helping eradicate poverty through education and organizing.   Just like in Jim Collins’ HedgeHog Concept, it is this work that I am passionate about, that I am genetically encoded to do, and that I have created an economic engine around.   

Thinking Outside the Box: The Startup

For now, this website (dot org) will be a think-tank and a research-oriented portal.    Here, I will identify pilot communities, design and create curricula and instructional media, and create partnerships.   Another website {  We Speak America dot com} will be developed as the “internet school” for my target population.   I need to make sure that I am fully equipped with evidence- and research-based materials to support what I personally consider to be a crisis in the American workforce. 

I invite you to join me on this exciting voyage.   { We Speak America } is at a startup stage. While you navigate the pages on this website, you will run into different aspects of adult learner education.    I have left out organizational information that I am not ready to make public yet (mission, vision, program, etc.).   This website will serve as a dynamic business card as I explore funding sources , put people in the organizational structure, and travel to one of my target cities to design a pilot program. 

Please feel free to comment on sections where such is provided.  I would love to hear from you.  I am looking for others who think outside the box, both concept people and doers.    There are no corner offices here. Change agents idea of change is around us. So if you understand your personal hedgehog concept and would like to help, please let me know. If you have any resources to add, please don’t hesitate to post in the comments venue.

Thank you once again for your visit.  Please follow us on Facebook.

Bino A. Realuyo
Founder, { We Speak America }
http://binoarealuyo.com/