Delivered Social’s regional director for Portsmouth, Terence Carvalho, is no stranger to doing good for the local community. He has balanced his working responsibilities with an ambassadorial role for his home city, managed a testing centre at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and since early 2021 has sat on the board of trustees for local children’s charity, The Literacy Hubs.
While Terence’s professional life is often spent promoting the waterfront city of Portsmouth as a fantastic place to live, work and do business with Delivered Social, his role with The Literacy Hubs involves tackling illiteracy among the city’s young people to help improve their life chances.
According to The Literacy Hubs, Portsmouth is hampered by some of the lowest literacy levels in the whole country and almost a quarter of its children live in poverty. With children from low-income backgrounds twice as likely to lag in expected levels of reading and writing by the age of 11, this has a detrimental impact on their prospects, as well as their overall health and wellbeing. In fact, it leaves these young people in the unenviable position of being twice as likely to leave secondary school without good GCSE grades in English and Maths.
However, Terence and The Literacy Hubs are working tirelessly to prove that it does not have to be this way.
First established by Becca Dean MBE, The Literacy Hubs offers unique and creative learning environments which help inspire those young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to enjoy reading and writing and improve their literacy skills.
Yet, while the charity has been hard at work to realise its aims in recent years, it too is feeling the pinch of the current cost-of-living crisis and is left having to find critical funding in order to continue its mission.
Terence tells The Leaders Council: “I was extremely proud when I was asked to join The Literacy Hubs. Giving back to the city of Portsmouth is something I am extremely passionate about, and the charity does some incredible work improving literacy levels in our city, but we need help.
“We don’t charge the families who use our services. We solely rely on generous individuals, the community itself and local businesses who wish to partner with us and with costs rising, we’re having to source more funding to be able to continue our invaluable work.
“We appreciate that times are difficult for everyone with the challenges of rising food and fuel prices and higher energy bills. However, even if people aren’t in a position to donate to our cause, we’re incredibly grateful for anyone who can simply help spread the word by liking and sharing our content on social media.
“We want to do everything we can to help the children of Portsmouth achieve what they want to achieve in terms of literacy, and this relies on us being able to continue.”
Individuals can donate directly to The Literacy Hubs via Crowdfunder UK here. If you are not in a position to donate, we would encourage you to share this news article on social media to help spread the word.
Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash
