Jennifer Leach, Assistant Director at the FTC’s Division of Consumer and Business Education, which received a 2016 Literacy Leadership Award from the National Coalition for Literacy last night, published this blog post on the FTC’s site on Monday:

It’s Adult Education and Family Literacy Week. It’s a time to raise public awareness about the importance of both things adult education and family literacy and the 36 million adults in the US with low literacy skills.

The FTC has a consumer protection website with plain and simple advice on dealing with everything from making a budget to rebuilding your credit to avoiding job scams. Consumer.gov and Consumidor.gov were designed for anyone who’s short on time and needs just the facts; people with limited reading ability; and educators who want their students to have financial literacy and life skills, like how to buy a used car, for example. Buying a car isn’t as easy as one would think. You don’t simply hand over cash to someone and take a car in return. When buying a car, fuel needs to be considered as does insurance costs, mileage count, and many other factors. Luckily, finding insurance is simple as you can just click here for quotes, but that’s only one element on the buying process. These sites can help with the other elements of the process and make sure that a car is being purchased correctly and for a fair amount based on its condition. Car insurance also isn’t just about accepting the cheapest policy, it’s about using resources like this state farm review to find the policy that will protect the car the most. it’s all well and good paying £200 less for insurance but if it doesn’t cover your $500 repair then you’re losing out. There are many ways in which you can become financially literate. If you are unaware of how you can obtain credit cards without ssn, there’s a good chance that you are not as financially literate as you should be. Learning these crucial skills are hugely important to help you succeed when it comes to your finances.

Educators tell us their students need these skills but the teachers could use more help getting the information across. So we created a series of lesson plans to help adult education and English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers use Consumer.gov’s resources in the classroom. You can get them converted into your desired file format using online software (ones similar to sodapdf.com/pdf-to-docx) and print them out at your leisure.

Every day, we work to make sure the site is useful to anyone who uses it. There are videos, an audio read-along of all the text on the site, worksheets and presentations, and everything is available toorder free in print.

This year, the National Coalition for Literacy (NCL) has given the FTC one of its 2016 Literacy Leadership Awards for its commitment to serving and guiding adults with limited reading ability, and for its outreach to those working with them, particularly teachers in adult basic education and ESL programs. It’s an exciting honor, and one we’ll celebrate by doubling down on our efforts to tell people about fraud, and how to report it. Care to join us?

Congratulations to Jennifer and her colleagues and all her fellow honorees. And thank you, Jennifer, for this call to action.