Formed in 2020 in memory of Jill Barr, a University Heights mother who died of complications of pneumonia in 2018, the Literacy League is the volunteer corps of The Literacy Cooperative’s Imagination Library program.
Jill Barr majored in English in college and loved to read. She also loved to help. She is remembered by friends and family as someone who always stepped up to fill any need, sprinkling acts of kindness wherever she went. She was the consummate volunteer, taking on the work of many with an ever-present smile on her face. Literacy was one of her pet projects, according to her husband Rob, who said she organized the reading volunteers at Canterbury School in Cleveland Heights, where her children attended elementary school.
At The Literacy Cooperative, we believe that the books mailed to children each month each represent a tiny act of kindness. Multiply the number of books by the number of times each one is read by a child or their caregiver and all of these combined, done in Jill’s memory, represent a massive ripple of resilience, brain building, kindness and literacy development in our community.
