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APPLIED SCHOLASTICS
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Each week hundreds of students avail themselves of the services of the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project (HELP), dubbed a "model facility" by the California Youth Mentoring Initiative of the governor's office.
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Grass-roots Programs Bring Hope – and Success
Recognizing that illiteracy has been identified as a cause for many other social ills including poverty and juvenile crime, many have put study technology to work broadly in nonscholastic settings, working directly in communities untouched by meaningful education.
In the Los Angeles area city of Compton, California, the World Literacy Crusade, a nonprofit educational organization founded by a Baptist minister, works in association with Applied Scholastics International to establish community-based literacy and learning programs which utilize study technology (including in Compton itself). These programs have been described by youth counselors as “heaven sent.” Not only have younger children markedly increased their reading and communication skills with the application of Mr. Hubbard’s study materials, but even gang members, normally disdainful of any remedial education programs, are willingly attending study classes. “These study materials,” commented a community minister who works with the program, “will set people free.”
In Lynwood, California, World Literacy Crusade tutors were invited to assist low-achieving public school students to improve reading and math skills. The average reading grade level increased by eight months in just seven weeks of part-time tutoring. Math tests improved 10 percentage points in the same time period.
Working with African-American churches, Applied Scholastics initiated a program to train parents as tutors so they could pass study skills to their families and other members of the community. Since then, the program has expanded to other US cities. In fact, inspired by the Crusade, by 1998 more than thirty similar community education programs were underway in the US, Canada, Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand, all working with ethnic groups and indigenous races.
 
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