LYNN — Several community members were honored for their work promoting literacy and education Wednesday night at the 10th annual Celebrate Literacy Day awards ceremony at Lynn Museum.
Local nonprofit Girls Inc. received the Excellence in Literacy Leadership Award for an organization; the individual awards were given to Coco Alinsug, candidate for Ward 3 city councilor, chair of Lynn Cultural Council and commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth; and Nicole McClain, candidate for at-large city councilor and founder and president of North Shore Juneteenth Association. Lynn Museum/Lynn Arts Executive Director Doneeca Thurston received the Untold Stories Award.
“They educate our community,” said Celebrate Literacy Day Founder and Chair Saritin Rizzuto of the honorees. “They make resources available and (accessible). They advocate for them and demand their rights be met.”
Donna Crotty, director of development and communications at Girls Inc., said while accepting the award that literacy is at the core of the organization’s program. She noted that children who do not meet reading-skill benchmarks by third grade are at an increased risk of not graduating high school.
“The ability to understand subject matter and communicate effectively is essential to a student’s academic performance. It boosts their self-esteem and encourages the girls to aspire in their learning,” Crotty said. “Being literate in our ever-changing world is probably one of the best means to combat generational poverty.”
Alinsug said that growing up in the Philippines, he was always trying to learn, and related a memory in which as an 11-year-old child his family once found him playing teacher to a group of 10 children his age.
He said that when he came to the United States at age 23, he faced a lot of challenges, and now hopes to help others who are in similar situations.
“Even now as a proud homeowner in Lynn, I see my experience in that of others and remain dedicated to doing all that I can to lessen disadvantage,” Alinsug said.
McClain, who is a children’s librarian at Lynn Public Library, was honored in part for her creation of the #LynnReads social media challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic, which encouraged families in lockdown to post videos of themselves reading stories.
“Educating children and being a part of our community and helping children learn and grow is really close to my heart,” McClain said.
Thurston received her award for the “Untold Stories” exhibit at the museum, which shows the history of Black people in Lynn.
“It’s a project that started many, many years ago, working with members of Lynn’s Black community as we recognized, as a colonial institution, what we have on view doesn’t speak to a lot of folks,” Thurston said. “As director, I’m really taking up this charge of celebrating stories of everyone in our community, because while we have different journeys, we do have common bonds that have brought us here to Lynn, and that is something that should be celebrated today and every day.”
The keynote speaker at the event was state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, herself a former teacher at Lynn’s Breed Middle School. Chang-Diaz told attendees about her father, Franklin, a NASA astronaut who first came to the United States from Costa Rica as a teen and had to learn English.
Chang-Diaz explained that her father was helped along the way by a librarian who gave him a job and encouraged him to read stories to young Puerto Rican children, translating the English books into Spanish and helping him develop his own literacy skills along the way.
“It shouldn’t be a lucky accident when a kid finds a librarian or a mentor like my dad did,” she said. “For too many kids, these kinds of supports are few and far between, and that makes my dad’s story sound like a winning lottery ticket. It shouldn’t be that way. It doesn’t have to be that way. We have got to make sure that every single one of our kids has the same access and the same opportunities before them.”
