Literacy Suffolk celebrated its 30th anniversary with the unveiling of a commemorative quilt at the non-profit’s headquarters in the Suffolk Cooperative Library System distribution center in Bellport on Monday. The quilt will make a tour of local libraries throughout the county over the next year. The organization also received a $10,000 donation from Mass Mutual Financial Group on Monday to help defray the cost of recruiting tutors.

The quilt’s 28 squares, each about as large as an adult hand, tell the non-profit’s 30-year history of educating functionally illiterate adults in Suffolk County. About 25 women, most of whom are volunteer literacy tutors, designed and assembled the quilt.

“The quilt tells a story. The quilt tells beautiful stories of a history and of a people,” Literacy Suffolk Executive Director Gini Booth, a Sag Harbor resident, said as she stood beside the quilt. She pointed to a square containing a white-and-red lighthouse overlooking a calm sea. “Doesn’t that look like Montauk?” she asked. She bent forward slightly to examine a square containing a beach vista. “This looks like my first day in Sag Harbor,” she said. “This is just so wonderful. I love it.”

At Monday’s unveiling, Deanna Filosa, a spokeswoman for Mass Mutual Financial Group, announced the $10,000 donation to the non-profit, which has an annual budget of $500,000. After making the announcement, she examined a quilt square depicting a bookshelf containing a door that opens to a backdrop of the solar system. “I think the person is trying to say that reading opens doors to the universe,” Ms. Filosa said.

The donation comes at a time when Literacy Suffolk is facing high student enrollment numbers and decreasing volunteer rates. As of July, 564 active students were enrolled in the countywide program. An additional 1,500 students were on a waiting list, either to be assigned to a tutor or screened for placement in the program. While student enrollment numbers remain high this year, the number of tutors has dropped. Since 2007, the non-profit has seen its ranks of tutors dip below 500, and down to about 400 this year. In years past, the group typically retained anywhere from 600 to 700 tutors.

Ms. Booth believes declining volunteerism is in part due to a poor economy and high gas prices. “People are going back to work, and this year it is very clear that it has to do with fuel prices,” Ms. Booth said. “But we are not giving up.”

The problem of functional illiteracy is widespread, the members say. According to Literacy Suffolk, 14 percent of the county’s 1.5 million residents are functionally illiterate in English, another language, or both. Literacy Suffolk students, who are all adults, hail from 59 different countries.

“This has no face, it cuts across all income groups and ethnic groups,” said Dr. Aldustus Jordan, chairman of the group’s board of directors and an associate dean at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine. “You could be sitting next to someone—well, at the opera—and they could be illiterate.”

Over the next year, organizers said the quilt will travel throughout the county for display in various libraries. After a showing at the non-profit’s annual gala in a private home in Oldfield on September 13, the quilt will make its first stop of the tour at the Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library on William Floyd Parkway in Shirley. It will then be displayed at Molloy College in East Farmingdale on October 24 and then in the Middle Country Public Library in Centereach on November 1. Organizers said on Tuesday the 2009 schedule for the quilt has yet to be hashed out.

After its countywide tour, the quilt will be permanently displayed at the group’s headquarters in Bellport.

Ina Casali of Moriches, program director for Literacy Suffolk, created two squares for the quilt.
Ms. Casali, who is a writing instructor at the Brentwood campus of Suffolk County Community College, said she finished her squares “in a couple of days.”

“Quilting is my passion. There isn’t a person in my family that doesn’t have a handmade quilt from me,” Ms. Casali said. But the literacy quilt is special, she said.