Consider the mother of three, a high-school dropout who works full time at a local fast-food restaurant because she lacks the skills to get a better-paying job.

Consider the 16-year-old girl confined to the Juvenile Detention Center, a dark cloud over her future. Or the middle-aged man ready to give up after failing twice to get his GED, not knowing a learning disability was holding him back.

And what about the grandmother who dreamed of being able to read to her new granddaughter?

All of these local residents have something in common: They have found a better life through Literacy Volunteers of Flathead County.

For a quarter-century the nonprofit organization has been reaching out to those who need help with basic literacy.

“We see the possibilities when they come in,” Literacy Volunteers Director Christine Hensleigh said. “Our tutors want to transform lives.”

And they’re doing just that.

Last year 135 volunteers worked with 503 learners, a record for the organization.

Literacy Volunteers added math tutoring in 2012 and helped 14 learners.

The English as a Second Language and Citizenship program gave 80 people the opportunity to improve their English skills last year. Tutors helped eight learners pass their U.S. citizenship test.

Basic literacy, a mainstay of the organization, helped 52 people gain reading skills to be able to get better jobs, read to their children or go back to school, Hensleigh pointed out.

Some participants need help with basic life skills such as budgeting and goal-setting. Literacy Volunteers worked on such skills with 81 teens at the Flathead Juvenile Detention Center and nine girls at Sinopah House.

One of the real success stories for Literacy Volunteers has been a reading outreach program Hensleigh established by collecting excess books from outlets such as the Soroptimist Thrift Haus in Whitefish and distributing them to food banks throughout the county.

Books find their way to Literacy Volunteers in many ways — “a box here and a box there” — from estate donations to local libraries updating their collections.

The Literacy Volunteers office at Gateway Community Center in Kalispell also has a library of free books ready and waiting for anyone who wants them.

“The idea of free books is really important,” Hensleigh said. “Those who struggle with reading are often intimidated to go to the library. This is a segue of access to incorporate books into people’s lives.

“A lot of what we do is get them comfortable with books and reading,” she continued, “so they’re comfortable in a learning environment.”

The reading outreach programs focus less on reading instruction than on recruiting new learners and spreading the word about the importance of reading. Literacy volunteers bring reading to all kinds of places, such as senior centers and drop-in day-care centers.

Only 30 percent of the learning goes on at Literacy Volunteers’ offices. Volunteers meet with learners at churches, coffee shops, after hours at schools, fitness centers, the grocery store — whatever best accommodates the client.

Getting a GED — a high school equivalency diploma — can be intimidating for many people who struggle with reading.

“They need help to show they can do it,” Hensleigh said. “It’s them thinking they can’t do it when we know they can. They need to believe in themselves.”

One-on-one instruction is the strength of Literacy Volunteers’ programs. It’s a model that takes away the hierarchy of the teacher and student, Hensleigh said.

Despite all of this outreach by staff and volunteers, the grim statistic is that 9 percent of the population in Flathead County is functionally illiterate.

“These are people who can’t read a map, a report card or a prescription label,” Hensleigh pointed out.

As Literacy Volunteers heads into the future, it’s a pivotal time for the organization that provides a mountain of service with a slim $60,000-a-year budget.

“This year we’ll make the shift to a structure that maintains the organization for another 25 years,” Hensleigh said. “The first 25 years Literacy Volunteers has quietly, humbly done a lot of good work. This is our year to tell our story, and that’s that anyone who wants to read, we’ll figure out a way to make it happen.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.