Recycling event to help promote literacy

Angela Soo

Friday, July 20, 2001 | 8:42 a.m.

Residents can help promote adult literacy by recycling their outdated Sprint phone books Saturday.

Sprint Yellow Pages will hold its first Las Vegas "Recycle for Literacy" event 7 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Sprint store parking lot, 2340 E. Tropicana Ave.

For every one-half ton of outdated directories collected during that time, Sprint Yellow Pages will donate $1,000 to the Clark County Library District to help fund adult literacy programs. A maximum of $10,000 will be donated.

"We know how important recycling is and we know that literacy is a central issue in Southern Nevada," Detra Page, Sprint media relations manager for the western region, said. "This is a good way to raise awareness for two important causes simultaneously."

Connie Barker, literacy director of the Clark County Library District, says that low literacy levels are associated with unemployment, low employment, crime and a dependence on other kinds of social services, such as welfare, subsidized housing and food stamps.

"But the biggest indication of low literacy and what keeps perpetuating the problem is a family's inter-generational history of low literacy," Barker said. Children born into families with low literary achievement tend to follow the same fate, she said.

The library enrolled 500 students into its adult literacy program this year, which was 50 percent more than last year. The funds from the recycling event will go directly to purchase instructional materials and hire more teachers, Barker said.

Residents may continue to donate their phone books to any of the 12 Las Vegas libraries until Aug. 10, but those books will not count toward adult literacy programs.

Las Vegas is the only market where Sprint finds it necessary to publish the Yellow and White pages twice a year, Page said.

"Since we provide to every home and business, we want to make sure people have the basic skills to look up a doctor or a repairman," Page said.