Upper Midwest Branch of the International Dyslexia Association

Support 1:5 children and adults with dyslexia

Help the Premiere Organization in the Upper Midwest continue offering outreach and education to parents, teachers, and students with dyslexia!

The International Dyslexia Association – Upper Midwest Branch (IDA-UMB) is entering an exciting time in its more than forty year history.  We are increasing our capacity to expand our reach and serve parents, educators and professionals across Minnesota, the Dakotas and Manitoba with professional, accessible information that will improve the lives of as many as 1:5 people in our service area.  

Our mission is to achieve proficient literacy for all students.  We are committed to the wide dissemination of research-based knowledge and we work tirelessly to educate parents, educators and other professionals to provide proper assessment and effective reading instruction to those with a learning disability like dyslexia, or others struggling to master the complex task of learning to read. 

What do we do with funds:

• Sponsor and coordinate educational outreach initiatives that reach thousands annually in our core audience: teachers, tutors and parents.  

• For forty years, we hold a highly respected, high quality annual conference that brings together people from all ends of our branch area with national experts in the field.  Our conferences offer specifics by practitioners and educators in the field, giving teachers resources to implement in the classroom, and parents ideas for how they can help their children at home.

• Our webinar series brings information on many topics for free to anyone from across our vast service area and beyond. 

•  We continue to maintain a highly sought after tutor referral list of practitioners that have completed training in a high-quality multi-sensory reading program.

The work of  IDA-UMB matters.  A former IDA-Board member and parent of a dyslexic child says this:

“My daughter’s third grade teacher told me that my bright, struggling child was “lazy.” My daughter is now a sophomore in high school and one of the top ten students in her class! She actually tutors other kids in Math and is an avid reader. If I had not had the information and support of IDA, I believe she would have ended up falling into the cracks of our education system, and would be a frustrated and failing teenager. I found my daughter’s first tutor through the IDA-UMB tutor referral program. She began using text-to-speech assistive technology that was recommended to me at an IDA-UMB workshop. IDA-UMB is invaluable, and serves to fill a critical and monumental gap in literacy education. I am forever grateful to the people I have met and the education I have received through this organization.”