Grant to improve writing will improve quality of life for some Wichitans

By Julie Rausch

Toni Pickard, right, a health professions faculty member, talks to students about a new literacy project WSU will offer in Planeview, a diverse, low-income neighborhood in southeast Wichita.

A literacy project that will help families get answers to health and wellness questions is the latest venture in WSU’s efforts to promote a healthier environment in a low-income neighborhood.

"Write For Your Life" will pair WSU graduate and undergraduate students with families from Planeview, a diverse southeast Wichita neighborhood.

It is being funded by the Kansas Writing Project at WSU. The KWP had received a $25,000 grant after submitting a $20,000 proposal to support its efforts to help teachers enhance their writing programs. KWP director Lori Norton-Meier successfully lobbied the National Writing Project to keep the extra money for the Planeview project.

"Write For Your Life" is being offered as a one-credit experimental learning unit paired with WSU’s "Special Populations" course. The course, taught by Toni Pickard in the master of public health program, introduces students to issues in diversity and cultural competency.

With the "Write For Your Life" project, "the idea isn’t to make families better readers and writers, but to ask each family to identify a question related to health and wellness, and to work in pairs with families to help them figure out how to get their question answered," said Norton-Meier.

Students will work with Planeview families to choose health issues they want help with, Norton-Meier said. It might include looking something up in a phone book, writing a letter to an official, addressing an envelope, or looking something up in a resource book, she said.

"Showing families how to go about contacting the right people, and communicating their questions and needs in such a way that officials or organizations can respond to them, serves as encouragement to show how reading and writing empowers community members to change their environment," she said.

WSU students, professionals and community members have been working together for several years to produce a healthier community environment in Planeview. The health outreach has grown to include tutoring programs, home repairs, job assistance and extensive language translation service.