Media Resources
Queens Library’s Family Literacy Program 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 Queens Library’s Family Literacy Program is one of three winners of the annual Better World Books/NCFL Libraries and Families Award.
“We combine goal-setting for real-life situations, emotional support, participants’ cultural traditions and student-driven learning so families learn the skills they need to attain their future ambitions,” said Silvana Vasconcelos, family literacy program coordinator. “This award will help us continue the innovative and intensive services we provide to our diverse community.”
Queens Library is known nationwide for its expertise in providing community-based service to immigrants in one of the nation’s most ethnically diverse counties, where 1 million residents are foreign-born.
“Queens Library is so effective because they realize that teaching literacy is not only about reading and writing, it’s about empowering parents to take an active role in their children’s education,” said Commissioner of the Department of Youth and Community Development Jeanne B. Mullgrav. “The real mark of their work is in the success of the people they serve. In the most diverse county in the United States, Queens Library is a proven leader in building the skills that new immigrants need to succeed in their new city, and I want to congratulate them on a job well done.”
In this intensive family literacy program, families participate 15 hours a week for 36 to 40 weeks. A large majority of families see increased adult literacy skills, improved listening, socialization and academic skills for children, additional reading in the home and even more time spent exercising. The parents also acquire the tools to become active advocates for their children’s education. Parental involvement is a known factor in children’s academic success.
“This 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.”
The program serves 245 people and has strong collaborative partnerships with museums, faith-based organizations, schools and other community-based organizations. It plans to use the award funding to help participants publish a cookbook and produce a newscast to promote health learning and literacy learning. The video and cookbook will be shared with children in the program.
“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.”
This is the latest award for the Queens Library Family Literacy Program. It has been selected by the city to create a model school-family literacy pilot. Vasconcelos was a finalist for the 2008 Toyota Family Literacy Teacher of the Year award and the NY Literacy Assistance Center 2006 Adult Educator.
The other winners are the Friends of the Dallas Public Library’s Every Child Ready to Read@Dallas and the San Diego Library’s READ/San Diego — Families for 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.