The Rightly Dividing Literacy Project, LLC is working to end illiteracy and the stigma around it, with a focus on ensuring those most affected build confidence and take charge of their lives. Founded in 2023, the Project integrates environment and climate awareness in its materials and strategies – particularly relevant for its historically marginalized communities who face unsafe housing, flooding, and legacy industrial contamination in Virginia. In Norfolk, that includes Barraud Park, Cottage Heights and Lindenwood, whose 3,200 residents represent an outsized number of the 16.2% of the city living below the poverty line. The RDLP offers a range of services to support individuals of all ages. Their experienced literacy coaches offer one-on-one coaching, group reading and writing workshops, and public speaking coaching. By connecting literacy to the real environmental challenges these neighborhoods face, the Project makes learning more meaningful and powerful.
Illustration from Black Like The Rainbow. Courtesy of Brynda E. Parker
Reflecting the community it serves, this fiscally-sponsored environmental literacy initiative is a Black-led organization, operating primarily in Norfolk, whose population is 57.8% people of color. According to the EPA, the downtown neighborhoods where RDLP focuses its work (Barraud Park, Cottage Heights and Lindenwood) rank in the 84th percentile for low income, the 91st percentile for unemployment, and the 88th percent for high school graduation rates. With the support of local volunteers, RDLP seeks to address these by closing the literacy gap. The group was founded by Dr. Brynda E. Parker, an award-winning educator and author of There Ain’t No Pews in Hell and the children’s book Black Like the Rainbow. As a subgrantee of the 2023 National Coastal Resilience Fund, they are educating and engaging community members on coastal resilience, leading outreach events, participating in training on nature-based solutions like wetland and marsh restoration, and helping create a local action plan to address flooding and climate impacts.
Brynda E. Parker speaks at a Tidewater Coalition for the People event.