Margaret D’Huyvetter has formed an unlikely friendship around language with a Mexican native.

Throughout the week, Ms. D’Huyvetter helps the woman improve her English listening and speaking skills through a branch of St. Joseph’s Pass the Power adult literacy program called Conversation Partners. After a year and a half, the woman continues to move rapidly through her lesson books. To practice her vocabulary, she often will try to read every word she sees as she walks down the street, and she regularly studies with books and movies from the library in addition to her time with Ms. D’Huyvetter.

“For me, it’s the best thing that in my life happened,” said the woman, who didn’t want her name published. “... I am glad with my teachers — it’s wonderful to learn with them.”

Ms. D’Huyvetter, a retired pharmacist, said an interest in Mexico and Central America made the volunteer position a natural choice for her. She said seeing the woman make the connections is the best part of her work.

“This is very much a student-directed effort that we have,” Ms. D’Huyvetter said.

Pass the Power is a community-based organization funded through grants and local donations. It works to recruit and train volunteers, then places them with individuals who have literacy difficulties. The organization offers programs such as drop-in tutoring, small group instruction and one-on-one tutoring, and also includes programs such as Conversation Partners, which was created for English Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, learners.

Deborah Ellsworth, director of the Pass the Power, said there are more than 1,000 non-native speakers in the area. Part of that number can be attributed to the 2005 opening of Triumph Foods, but Ms. Ellsworth said others might be attracted to the area because of family members or by other employers.

Conversation Partners, which is in the pilot stage, helps address that influx.

“Several of our volunteers who have signed up for the program have wanted to because they’re going to practice their own language skills, and that’s where the partnership comes in,” Ms. Ellsworth said.

One in 10 people in St. Joseph is unable to read at a fourth-grade level, which is considered basic proficiency, Ms. Ellsworth said. A person with literacy difficulties is sometimes hard to pinpoint.

“Many of these folks are very, very intelligent because they’ve developed coping skills, and people don’t know that they have a reading difficulty,” she said. “It takes courage for them to come through that door and say, ‘I need help.’”

Betty Kimberling, adult education and literacy director with the St. Joseph School District, also recognizes the difficulty of getting someone to take that first step in any of the adult literacy programs. She said Conversation Partners is just one of the wider variety of classes now offered at the AEL center and that students are staying after their other classes to take advantage of that program in the evening.

“We have a lot of students that are needing to practice their skills, and they practice with other (English language learners),” Ms. Kimberling said.

Mary Beth Revels, director of the St. Joseph Public Library, helped secure a Library Services and Technology Act grant for Conversation Partners, and the library also provides space for the classes.

“We’ve got all this material that can help them learn how to learn the language,” Ms. Revels said. “It just seemed like a good fit.”

Ms. Revels said all student in the program get an Oxford picture dictionary to help their English and that each class will focus on a different topic, which might include housing or health care, to help familiarize students with what services are available in the community.

“It’s not just an English class where you’re learning or a language class where you go in and you say, ‘OK, this is how you conjugate verbs,’” Ms. Revels said. “... This is a class that focuses on conversation so that people can become familiar with everyday speaking.”