The Cluster Tutoring Program, based in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, is the recipient of the 2010 Sun-Times Literacy Award. John Barron, publisher of the Sun-Times, awarded the $10,000 prize Thursday, May 13, at First United Church of Oak Park. Administered by Lawyers Lend-A-Hand to Youth, the award has been presented for the last three years to a tutoring or mentoring program whose primary focus is literacy.

In presenting the award, named for the newspaper, Barron stated that, "[W]hat we're really exchanging through writing and reading is all the big stuff: information and entertainment and emotion and history and poetry and feelings and knowledge and understanding and truth."

Cluster provides free one-on-one tutoring and mentoring to students from Chicago's Austin neighborhood. Tutors are volunteers from Oak Park and other Chicago suburbs who work to improve students' academic performance and to build relationships that overcome the boundaries of age, race and socioeconomic background. Cluster currently serves 90 youth in kindergarten through high school with a total program budget of only $70,000. This award will help Cluster cover expansion costs for its literacy program over the next three years.

Specifically, the award money will be used to help Cluster expand and improve three programs - its structured reading program, its early literacy assessments, and it vocabulary development program. Jordan Burks, a Cluster 5th grade student, accepted the award by sharing how with the help of one-on-one tutoring he now reads above grade level.

The Sun-Times Literacy Award is administered by the Lawyers Lend-A-Hand to Youth Program. Lend-A-Hand awarded more than $200,000 in grants this year, providing support to 30 programs serving approximately 8,000 youth across the Chicago area. The Sun-Times Literacy Award is one of three annual named awards that recognize outstanding youth tutoring or mentoring programs. Others are the Thomas A. Demetrio Award of Excellence and the Much Shelist Founder's Award.