Originally posted Monday, December 9, 2019 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
"America's Got Talent" singer and Suwanee resident Angelica Hale and veteran Korean-American stand-up comic Henry Cho will participate in the first major fundraiser for a start-up Duluth non-profit literacy group Catalyst Coalition this Thursday night. (Tickets available here.)
Two long-time Korean-American friends and ministers Jin Lee and David Kim were concerned after hearing that more than half of Gwinnett County third graders were not proficient in reading to move to the next grade based on the Milestone tests. (That number has improved this year and hit 50% this year, better than the state as a whole.)
“There are literacy programs out there but we want to address the entire family,” Lee said He said he knew many new immigrant parents couldn’t help their kids become proficient in English because they themselves couldn’t read well.
So Lee met with county educators and the two men started Catalyst Coalition earlier this year. They began a test program this past fall at Chesney Elementary in Duluth with 10 students and 10 parents. Every Tuesday and Thursday, they hold separate classes for the kids and the parents at the same time in hopes that they will help each other when they are home.
Credit: David Kim helping kids with literacy as part of Catalyst Coalition
Credit: David Kim helping kids with literacy as part of Catalyst Coalition
The original pool of kids are all Hispanic but Lee and Kim hope to eventually add other immigrant groups to the mix. They are going to double that to 20 kids and parents each starting in January.
They also plan to add other schools over time and partner with other non-profits in the literacy field to scale the operation.
“There is a crisis of literacy hidden in Gwinnett County and we want to rally second-generation ethnic professionals to help us out,” Kim said.
Both founders of the group were born in South Korea and stateside as young children. Kim, who came stateside at age seven, said he grew up poor, his dad an itinerant preacher who led him to Colorado, Wyoming and Texas. An ESL teacher at one of his schools helped him learn to read and his dad encouraged him at home. (His mom, he said, never became particularly good at English.)
Kim’s upbringing, he said, made him empathetic to the needs of immigrant families like him who are adjusting to life in the United States.
The entertainers for the fundraiser are both prominent in their respective circles.
Cho, 56, was one of the first Asian American stand-up comics to generate national prominence in the 1980s and a rare one with a Tennessee drawl. (He is not related to peer Margaret Cho.)
Hale, 12, is a preternaturally good singer who came in second during the 2017 "America's Got Talent" competition. She has spent the past two years performing all around the world and honing her vocal craft. She is hoping to be a pop star and loves the likes of Camila Cabello, Arianda Grande and Billie Eilish. She also just came out with a Christmas EP available on Spotify, Amazon and Google Play.
IF YOU GO
Joy to Give Night for Catalyst Coalition
7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday, December 12
$50
Davis Media Studios
2775 Premiere Parkway #200
Duluth
Disclosure: my wife Helen Kim Ho is providing the group with volunteer help.
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