Media Resources
Every Child Ready to Read@Dallas wins national $10,000 Better World Books/NCFL Libraries and Families Award
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (April 5, 2011) — Better World Books and the National Center for Family Literacy today announced that the Friends of the Dallas Library family literacy program is one of three winners of the annual Better World Books/NCFL Libraries and Families Award.
“Our program is successful at encouraging parents to read more with their children, engage in more book sharing time and more literacy-based activities to enhance their early literacy skills,” said Jasmine Africawala, program coordinator for Every Child Ready to Read@Dallas. “This much-needed grant funding will allow us to reach even more families in need.”
The program, which serves 5,600 families a year, is open to all families with children newborn to 6 years old. More than 80 percent of the participating families are Hispanic or African-American.
“The Every Child Ready to Read@Dallas program fills a tremendous need in the community,” said David Murphy, president and CEO of Better World Books. “We are proud to partner with NCFL to specifically promote the new and innovative ways libraries like this are working to bring families together over books and learning.”
According to the 2008-09 Annual Educational Performance Report released by the Texas Education Agency, 15 percent of Hispanic and 24 percent of African-American third-grade students in Dallas did not reach reading proficiency levels on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test. In addition, dropout rates in 2008 for Hispanic and African-American high school students were 21 percent and 23 percent, respectively.
Workshops are conducted in libraries, community centers or schools to engage parent and child in hands-on interactive, literacy-based activities. Parents are provided with ideas for activities to do at home, children’s recommended book lists, information on library services, a free children’s book and library card sign-up.
After attending the workshop, 83 percent of families engage in more literacy activities at home.
However, many families are unable to attend because of a lack of transportation. The grant will bring workshops into the homes of the families who are unable to attend by creating home instructional DVDs, which will be available in English and Spanish. They will feature parents engaging in literacy activities with children in a way that families can follow along with their children as they watch the video.
“Libraries provide important access for families to read together and take other critical steps that lead to success — both immediately and later in life,” said Emily Kirkpatrick, NCFL vice president. “This award funding will spur the innovative programming fundamental to that success.”
The other winners are the San Diego Public Library’s READ/San Diego — Families for Literacy and the Queens Library Family Literacy Program.
Funding for the program comes from the Better World Books for Libraries program, a free service that helps libraries manage their unwanted books. Better World Books sells those books online, sharing the revenues with the libraries and its nonprofit literacy partners.
This is the second year of the award and the latest partnership effort between NCFL and Better World Books, which together have raised more than $695,000 for NCFL’s programming since 2005.
Hundreds of thousands of books have been donated and sold to support family literacy since the partnership began. Books come from college campus book drives, library discards and donations, and corporate book drives. These efforts have funded the purchase of more than 10,000 books to restock family libraries after Hurricane Katrina and the development of resources to reach wide audiences with literacy tools and materials.
ABOUT NCFL
The National Center for Family Literacy is the worldwide leader in family literacy. More than 1 million families have made positive educational and economic gains as a result of NCFL’s work, which includes training more than 150,000 teachers and thousands of volunteers. For more information, visit www.famlit.org.
ABOUT BETTER WORLD BOOKS
Better World Books (www.BetterWorldBooks.com) is a for-profit social enterprise that collects and sells books online with each sale generating funds for literacy initiatives in the U.S. and around the world. With more than eight million new and used titles in stock, Better World Books is a self-sustaining company that balances the social, economic and environmental values of its stakeholders. Better World Books diverts books from landfills by conducting book drives on 1,800 college campuses, and by collecting discards from over 2,000 libraries. Since its founding in 2003, the Mishawaka, Ind.-based company has raised over $9 million for its non-profit literacy, library and college partners; donated over 4 million books; re-used or recycled more than 45 million books; achieved over 19,000 tons of carbon offsets through carbon-neutral shipping, and created more than 200 full-time jobs with meaningful benefits.