Although Edith Barns is retired, at a graduation ceremony one recent evening at the National Baptist Church in Adams Morgan she was not in the audience, but rather a recipient. As she stood on stage and grasped her diploma, she told an audience of family and friends, “You have no idea what this feels like; I’ve wanted this for 40 years.”

Also recently, John Harris, a recovering alcoholic from Southeast Washington, D.C., also graduated from the Academy of Hope that same evening. When he received his diploma he said, “When you talk about adult education, you’re talking about breathing life, giving another chance.”

Harris and Barns are just two of the hundreds of adults who have conquered their illiteracy through such organizations as the Academy of Hope and the Washington Literacy Council that offer adults free help and education.

However, there are still thousands of individuals in the District of Columbia who are unable to read or write beyond a third-grade level, and this problem does not appear to be getting better.

Approximately 37% of D.C. residents are at the lowest level of literacy, a figure that is down only slightly from over a decade, according to a 2003 study from the U.S. Department of Education. This is compared to a national average of 22% of adults at the lowest level, which was down 4% compared to 10 years earlier.

The reasons why people grow up unable to read and write vary greatly. But one factor that stands out in many illiterate adults in D.C. is a background of poverty, according to Washington Literacy Council program director Elizabeth Liptak.

“There’s both a cycle of low literacy and there’s a cycle of poverty, and I think they go hand in hand,” Liptak said.

Liptak said 20% of students have “environmental dyslexia” caused by a lack of stimulation during their youth. “The result is the same as if they had classic dyslexia,” she added.

Additionally, only about15% of students at the Literacy Council have high school diplomas. Most have dropped out.

Most illiterate adults simply get by through memorizing key words and phrases, Liptak said, but they are so limited that they often cannot complete a job application and end up taking the lowest level of jobs.

That was the case for Carlton Davis, a retired maintenance worker who has been attending basic reading classes sporadically at the Literacy Council for 10 years. He grew up one of 21 children when schools were still segregated. His mother worked tirelessly in a peanut factory but couldn’t make ends meet. He left school during the fourth grade so he could help provide for the family.

Though he still harbors some resentment over the injustices of his past, Davis said he is pleased at how things have improved for his children and grandchildren.

“I wish my mom could see this happen,” Davis said. “She never thought it would.”

Liptak said, “We are kind of seeing the remnants of segregation, when people didn’t go to school.”

Although things have changed since segregation, there are many children who do not receive the education they need and are left limited in their adulthood.

“They don’t just show up on our doorsteps,’’ Liptak said, ``they’re the product of our schools.” While the Literacy Council focuses on students with the lowest level of literacy, the Academy of Hope helps those with more comprehension, at about a sixth-grade level, according to program director Kathryn Sommers.

Still, there are similarities. Many Academy students are high school dropouts who left school because of a teen pregnancy or family illness.

However, about 40% of the Academy of Hope students are refugees and immigrants who are seeking to improve their English. That includes several women from Afghanistan who could not be educated in their own country and have sought education at the Academy of Hope.

The reasons why people are in the literacy program are “almost as diverse as the student body,” Sommers said.

Both Liptak and Sommers agree that learning to read and write as an adult is much more difficult than learning as a child.

“Their lives are a fragile balance to make things meet,” Sommers said of the Academy students. “They have full-time jobs, children and other life responsibilities that make a commitment to classes difficult.”

Liptak said that there is “a whole host of challenges” that make participation in the Washington Literacy Council program especially difficult, even though it requires just one class a week, in which students learn to read phonetically. Many students are earning less than the minimum wage, have no benefits, work long hours and have seasonal jobs consisting of physical labor, she said.

“They’re only different [from young students] in that it’s harder,” Liptak said.

And there also are challenges for the organizations trying to educate adults who are illiterate.

The federal government often uses illiteracy statistics to push GED education, Liptak said. As a result, funding is often “skewed” in that direction. But earning a GED isn’t always realistic for many adults who come to WLC.

“If they can feel more successful, those are important measures too,” Liptak said. “We see a lot of qualitative improvements,” including increased self-esteem and independence.

Literacy “makes them feel in control, that they can help themselves” instead of relying on others to read a menu at a restaurant, understand a bus schedule, or open a checking account, Liptak said.

The promise of student confidence was evident during a recent Monday night basic class at WLC. Volunteer instructors Valerie Briggs and Jessica Nysenbaum led students in sounding out the spelling of words.

The vowel “e” appeared to be the most difficult to pinpoint as they attempted to spell the word “stem.” A woman in the front of the room succeeded in the spelling. “Right on!” she said, raising her hands in the air in a celebratory dance.

A burly man nearby asked, “Can I try one?” Briggs happily acquiesced.

The man said, “I was writing someone the other night and I was trying to sound out ‘companion.’ ”

Briggs prompted the students to sound out the word and spell it on the board. All struggled with the “ion” ending, one of those tricky exceptions in the English language.

Meanwhile, at the Academy of Hope, magazines, books and newspapers fill the shelves. Carefully framed photographs of every graduate hang on every wall of its entrance beside a board that states, “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh.