Who Are We Today at Literacy Action, professional adult education instructors work with hundreds of students each year in a number of classroom programs – from basic skills to GED preparation, computer training, and 21st Century work skills.  Literacy Action continues to serve low-income, predominantly African-American adults who live in or close to the city center.  The agency has witnessed an increase in younger students (age 18-24) over the past ten years.  Disconcertingly, some of these students possess a high school diploma, but still are unable to read and write at levels required in technical school or college. More than 90% of Literacy Action's current students live at or below the poverty level. Almost 40% of them are unemployed and come to Literacy Action to increase their marketable literacy skills. Sixty-one perecnt of them are the primary caregiver to one or more school aged child. The agency primarily serves residents of the Cityof Atlanta (40%), Fulton/non-city (20%) and DeKalb (22%) counties. By the numbers:  50% of Americans who struggle with literacy are high school graduates. More than 20% of adults (1 in 5) read at or below a fifth-grade level. 3 out of 4 food stamp recipients perform at the lowest literacy levels. 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems. 50% of the chronically unemployed are functionally illiterate. Children raised in low-literate homes enter kindergarten two years behind their peers, and are significantly more likely to drop out of high school. The American Medical Association found that low literacy skills increase annual healthcare expenditures by $73 billion. Illiteracy costs Georgia more than $2 billion annually in lost wages and reduced productivity. More than 800,000 adults in Metro-Atlanta are functionally illiterate.  Of those, only 50,000 are being served with adult education programs.   Source: http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/facts/facts.html