There are counties in the Black Belt region of Alabama where as much as 30 percent of their population lacks basic prose literacy skills, according to a report released in 2009 by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Nisa Miranda, director of the University Center for Economic Development, said the high illiteracy rates in the counties of Alabama’s Black Belt region contribute to the immense poverty and resulting social immobility in these areas. She said University of Alabama organizations and students are working to address this issue, but the problem is massive and systemic.

“The counties that surround The University of Alabama are all, by and large, very poor,” Miranda said. “Right now, they have no farming to speak of, and little industry.”

Miranda said the key to changing the economic climate in impoverished Black Belt counties is education.

To that end, the UA Center for Economic Development is holding a book drive to reduce the disparity in resources between schools in the Black Belt and wealthier schools.

Students will be able to donate books at eight collection sites, which will be set up on campus throughout the month of March.

“The basis of this project is twofold,” Miranda said. “One part is to help the schools, which are the mechanism to actually help individuals in that county. The second part is attacking the literacy problem, because when you have poor children born into poor families, what little resources they have are going to be spent investing in housing, food…the basic necessities of life.”

Miranda hopes this project will turn into something more – a true partnership between campus organizations and schools in the Black Belt.

“By doing a campuswide drive that would focus on all of the student organizations on campus and all of the colleges, we’re hoping that we will identify champions, people who are interested in some particular aspect of this [problem],” Miranda said.

Russell Willoughby, a sophomore majoring in English, had heard all of the statistics before, but said entering a classroom in the Black Belt during a University Fellows experience made the problem much more real.

“When a face is put to that, it makes it so much more infuriating and heartbreaking,” she said.

Willoughby, along with Kevyn Armstrong-Wright, another University Fellow, worked with first and fourth graders in Marion, Alabama on visual art projects and poetry.

“With the poetry, we wanted to take reading and make it relevant to them and give them ownership in it,” Willoughby said. “We wanted to emphasize that reading isn’t some lofty activity.”

Chris Joiner, a senior majoring in biology who is involved with 57 Miles, an Honors College initiative that attempts to address issues of educational inequity between the Black Belt and wealthier communities, said he would like to see his organization partner with an existing Honors College literacy organization, READ Alabama, to expand literacy in the Black Belt.

“We want to take things that have worked, tailor them to the Black Belt, and reproduce them,” he said.

Miranda said she hopes that campus organizations will contact her office in order to partner with specific schools or counties.

“We’ve got lots of talent on this campus,” Miranda said. “We’re hoping that there will be adopt-a-school and in-school programing by volunteers. Hopefully from that we can get some of these kids, as they grow up, to dream big and go to college.”

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