Today we honor the #1 ranked early childhood education nonprofit in the Bay Area: Raising a Reader. This organization has had a significant impact on developing a love of reading in young children and has been instrumental in supporting families in having more literacy-related experiences with their children. They also boast a standardized curriculum across sites and they have proven to be sustainable over time. Raising a Reader’s impact has been measured by fifteen independent evaluations, universities, and evaluation consulting firms.
Here’s some more information about how Raising a Reader works:
Raising a Reader is a national nonprofit organization that offers an evidence-based early-literacy and parent-engagement program. It currently serves 110,000 children through its 2,500 affiliate sites across the country. During the program, each child is exposed to approximately 100 books per year, and parents and caregivers are trained in interactive read-aloud strategies. This training helps parents and caregivers learn how to engage their child by sharing a book.
The program works by rotating bright red bags filled with award-winning books into children’s homes on a weekly basis. Through Raising a Reader, families are connected with their local public library. At the culmination of the program, children receive a blue library bag to keep and continue the practice of borrowing books.
“No other library service has the outcome-based evaluation results that Raising a Reader has,” said Nell Colburn, librarian at Multnomah County Library. “Our evaluations consistently show substantial gains in changing parent and caregiver behaviors around books and reading.”
(Read more at: http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/07152010/raising-reader-gets-children-started-early)
To learn more about Raising a Reader and their impact, read the expert reviews here.