Border residents are being asked to paint the town red to support dyslexia awareness in the community.
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The Chandelier Room at Albury Entertainment Centre will glow red from October 13 to 15 to help mark the Light It Red for Dyslexia campaign.
The community is invited to come for a picnic on Saturday, October 14 from 6.30pm to 8pm at QEII Square to help the Albury-Wodonga Dyslexia Support Group raise awareness of the learning difficulty that affects 1 in 5 Australians.
Families are being asked to dress in red and bring along a torch to help shed further light on the subject.
The Border event is among a raft of initiatives across the country to mark Dyslexia Awareness Month in October.
It comes on the back of the hugely successful Multisensory Structured Language (MSL) associate course held at St Augustine’s Primary School Wodonga from October 2-6.
More than 30 participants from the Border, Corryong, Benalla, Wangaratta and as far afield as Sydney and Malaysia undertook the five-day course, which was the first time it had been offered outside metropolitan Victoria.
It was designed to show teachers, therapists and parents how they could better teach children to read and spell using a systematic phonics approach.
The idea of bringing such a course to the Border was born from the community’s overwhelming response to the new Albury-Wodonga Dyslexia Support Group.
In less than a year the group’s Facebook page swelled to more than 300 members, including parents of children with dyslexia and other learning difficulties as well as tutors, speech therapists and teachers.
Administrator and co-founder Sarah Allen said there was a “crying need” for more information and resources in literacy education.
“More and more children are being identified with learning difficulties and parents are pushing for more help,” Ms Allen said at the time.
Light it Red for Dyslexia is a volunteer initiative to light significant monuments across Australia to raise more awareness about dyslexia and in previous years Wodonga’s water tower has glowed red for the campaign.
In 2017 the parent-driven My Red Letter competition will once again run from September 1 – October 22.
This year’s competition focuses on “positive role models and acknowledging the champion in your life that helps you to embrace your dyslexia”.
The aim is always to promote the message that: “With the right intervention and support children and adults with dyslexia can go on to achieve anything they desire.”