Community Bank & Trust

CORNELIA, GEORGIA (June 3, 2010) – Community Bank & Trust and the Volunteers for Literacy have joined forces to supply 650 third graders in Habersham County with a personal dictionary. The bank, a long-time advocate of financial literacy for citizens of all ages, has committed the financial resources to provide each child in the third grade their own dictionary.

According to Bill Loyd, Senior Vice President of Community Bank & Trust, “Reading and writing development tools are critically important for achieving essential communication skills.  Third graders must pass the CRCT to move up to the fourth grade. If we can assist the Volunteers for Literacy with their mission – to establish and maintain programs that promote and foster literacy in Habersham County – then maybe our children and grandchildren will be better prepared to meet and surpass critical educational standards.”

Volunteers for Literacy – a United Way agency – has been in existence for over 20 years. It began as an outreach to increase reading skills with the aid of volunteer tutors and quickly expanded to helping with GED and other basic learning skills. It now provides a multitude of learning skills that include not only GED preparation, but also English as a Second Language, civics for non-native speakers of English, reading, writing and computation. Volunteers for Literacy has also helped make tremendous strides in reducing the drop-out rate by encouraging advocates who visit and speak at all elementary schools about the importance of staying in school.

Public daycare centers and the public school system are venues of choice for Volunteers for Literacy due to the large number of children, youth, and teens who can be reached there. Community Bank & Trust along with Volunteers for Literacy are demonstrating their joint mission of enhancing basic but critical skills by delivering new and innovative literacy support programming wherever it is needed in Habersham County. Hopefully, groups in other northeast Georgia counties will follow their lead.


Community Bank & Trust has been 'banking the customer's way' in North Georgia for 110 years.  With locations in 10 North Georgia counties, Community Bank & Trust is a division of SCBT, N.A., a subsidiary of SCBT Financial Corporation, which was named in Forbes as one of the 100 Most Trustworthy Companies in America in 2009.  SCBT Financial Corporation has assets of approximately $3.7 billion and its stock is traded under the symbol SCBT in the NASDAQ Global Select Market.