Resolution Read Makes Every Month National Literacy Month

While September is National Literacy Month, the Junior League of Washington celebrates literacy’s impact on children and communities year round. One committee that works tirelessly in this effort is Resolution Read. This committee volunteers at community events, tutors students, hosts story time at local libraries and donates thousands of reading materials annually to help all Washington, D.C., youth develop a lifelong habit of reading.  

In the last year, Resolution Read has:

•        Handed out 600 books in partnership with DC Scores!, a soccer and community service organization
•        Distributed an additional 350 books through the DC Scores! Poetry Slam
•        Donated books to the Literacy Lab, a tutoring program that encourages summertime reading for more than 200 D.C. students
•        Volunteered at the recognition ceremony of the 2015 “Letters About Literature” essay contest; Letters About Literature is a project of The Center for the Book and the Library of Congress
•        Assisted at workshops led by Turning the Page, an organization that works with D.C. Public Schools, families and communities to ensure students receive valuable resources and a quality public education
•        Volunteered at the STAR Family Festival, an event that promotes early literacy and the importance of singing, talking and reading to children

One of Resolution Read’s largest events is its annual holiday book drive. In 2014, the committee delivered more than 1,000 books to several local organizations. Resolution Read will continue this holiday tradition with another major book delivery during the 2015 season. 

These efforts are more than just donations of time or material. They are an opportunity to spark a love of reading and foster a desire for learning. That’s a gift shared by both the children and the members of Resolution Read all the months of the year. 

The committee was created during the JLW’s centennial year and currently has more than 25 members striving toward the our League’s overall focus.  

Literacy Lab Winter Fun

Gingerbread men, snowman bookmarks, and holiday cards! The Literacy Lab Committee had a great time working on these crafts with the kids at the DC General homeless shelter during our winter holiday celebration.  The event was held in mid-December and focused on reading as well as holiday fun.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Literacy Lab Committee, we partner with the non-profit organization, The Literacy Lab, to assist with an early childhood literacy program for young children in two DC area homeless shelters.  The program is called Ready to Read and focuses on helping young children develop and practice early literacy skills.  During a typical session, JLW volunteers spend time reading, writing, and playing educational games with the children. When the committee began in 2012, we worked with kids in the DC General homeless shelter on Saturday mornings.  The program has since expanded and now the committee provides volunteers for Wednesday evening sessions at DC General as well as Saturday morning sessions at the New Beginnings shelter in Columbia Heights.

Our December holiday party gave the committee members and the children an opportunity to celebrate the season and participate in activities that we don't do during our regular weekly sessions. The most active part of the evening involved three craft projects.  With the help of JLW volunteers, each child had the opportunity to make and decorate a snowman bookmark, frost a gingerbread man cookie and make a holiday card for their family.  When the crafts were done, we read a holiday story and sang a few rounds of Christmas carols. Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bells were particular favorites.  At the end of the party, each child had an opportunity to pick out books of their very own to take home with them.
                                          
The entire evening was gratifying and fun, and it was great to watch the kids carefully pick out their books and make their crafts. We're all looking forward to the next holiday event in February!

JLW Chair Extraordinaire- Bailey Hopple

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." 

- John Quincy Adams

We are proud to honor Bailey Hopple, chair of Literacy Lab, as JLW Chair Extraordinaire. A second-year Active, Bailey has taken the reigns and run with one of the JLW's newest partners and placements. With quick skill and thoughtful planning, she ensured a new program, the Colgate Bright Smiles dental-screening van, was a success with the children and families at the DC General shelter.  She and her team have pushed up their sleeves all year with great enthusiasm. Congratulations, Bailey and keep up the good work!  

Did you know there are more than 125 leadership positions in the JLW? Each year, an amazing group of women answer the call to serve and their talent and skills form the support structure upon which our organization runs. Just as we value and appreciate your membership, we appreciate their service. The JLW Chair Extraordinaire is a new award for our Centennial year. Each month, council directors may nominate a leader for consideration and one chair will be recognized by the president.

Why I Serve- Literacy Labs

The Washington Post recently highlighted the plight of homeless families living in the DC General Family Emergency Shelter, which is located in the old DC General Hospital. You can find the articles here and here. The Post articles noted that 900 people are currently living in the shelter. This number includes 600 children who are growing up in a challenging situation. 

Homeless children living in an unstable environment face particular challenges when it comes to literacy. Statistics consistently show that young homeless children experience developmental delays, especially in speech. The instability of their living situation makes it difficult for these children to consistently attend preschool programs, which are rarely available to begin with. Because of these challenges, the Junior League of Washington (JLW) has recently partnered with Literacy Lab to assist with an early literacy program for toddlers and young children up to five years old, in the DC General Shelter. The name of the program is Ready to Read.

On Saturday mornings, the women of one of the JLW’s newest committees, the Literacy Lab committee, join with Literacy Lab instructors to help young children develop early literacy skills. The Ready to Ready program also provides parents with strategies and skills to support their children’s learning. Volunteers spend time reading and playing educational games with the children and assist with the parent skills workshop. Volunteers also observe the children, looking for developmental milestones to assess the children’s progress, as well as any skill deficiencies. The children and their parents are a joy to work with, and it is incredibly rewarding to be involved with such an impactful project.

As the Washington Post articles highlight, homeless families in the DC General shelter are faced with difficult challenges on a daily basis, including transportation to programs outside the shelter.  Establishing an early literacy program within the shelter allows parents and their children to attend the program on a regular basis and provides them with tools to help achieve future academic success.

If you are interested, please stop by Literacy Lab’s table at an upcoming Placement Information Event on either Saturday, April 13 or Thursday, April 25.

Cary Gibson, JLW Member on Literacy Lab Committee

The Literacy Lab, a New Community Partner and Grant Recipient

The Junior League of Washington is proud to announce our newest community partner – as well as grant recipient – is The Literacy Lab, a local nonprofit organization devoted to dramatically increasing the reading levels of low-income children in the District of Columbia. Founded in 2009 by a former DC public school teacher, the organization currently serves over 250 students attending 45 public schools in Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland.

The Literacy Lab’s mission is to provide high-quality, targeted reading remediation to low-income students in order to increase their literacy skills, leading to increased academic success and greater opportunities in life. Their experience has shown that students will make progress when they are given quality instruction in a consistent and structured manner. By providing individualized reading instruction which targets fundamental skills, The Literacy Lab's trained volunteers will lead students to higher reading levels and increased confidence, which supports the League's focus of increasing reading skills in children.

The JLW has awarded $25,000 to The Literacy Lab, allowing them to operate the Ready to Read program at DC General Family Emergency Shelter, the largest of Washington, DC’s government-run family shelters, through weekly Parent-Child Literacy Development Workshops. Ready to Read is a critical reading readiness program for families with toddlers and young children ages 0 – 5. The program will deliver a consistent amount of read aloud and print exposure to high-risk homeless children ages 0 – 5, as well as provide homeless parents with a skill set to read with and engage their children in literacy activities from birth onward. Funds will specifically be used to create a lending library housed at the shelter with reading materials and pre-literacy activities for parents and children to use during the workshop and then to check out afterwards for their use during the week.

The Literacy Lab anticipates approximately 250 parents and children (125 families) will be served over the course of the year though the weekly two hour Parent-Child Literacy Development Workshops. For the first hour, parents will participate in a workshop where they will learn an early literacy skill and practice implementing that skill while their children are participating in a read aloud and related read aloud session. For the second hour, the parents and children will reconvene; a healthy snack will be provided, and then parents and children will go through literacy centers together, allowing the parents the opportunity to practice the skills they learned. At the end of the session, the parents will have the option of checking out books and materials. The goals of the program are to increase parents’ skills and knowledge in the area of early literacy development, to provide a print-rich and engaging environment for young children in order to increase their reading readiness and early literacy skills mastery, and to increase access to high-quality reading materials for families living at the DC General Shelter.

The Literacy Lab will use trained JLW volunteers to help implement the Ready to Read program, providing them with a meaningful, manageable, high-impact opportunity on Saturday mornings. Trained volunteers will run the read aloud sessions with the children, which can include reading a story aloud, asking questions, listening to/singing songs with the children, reviewing basic vocabulary and modeling reading habits. During the second hour, volunteers will run the literacy centers, examples which include rhyming, make-believe dress-up, vocabulary puzzles, sound identification, and letter naming. Finally, volunteers will help monitor the lending library and help parents check out books and manipulatives.

If you would like to receive further information about the 2012-2013 grant process, including notice of the application and deadline information, please contact Alicia Lee, Chair, Targeted Grants and Volunteer Resources Committee at grantsandvolunteers@jlw.org.

Alicia Lee
Chair, Targeted Grants and Volunteer Resources Committee