NCFL Update!

Posted by admin on 10.03.2007 at 8:46 am

Join the most creative and progressive leaders working to integrate families, communities and education at the 17th Annual National Conference on Family Literacy: “Literacy Grows Families and Communities.”

The event, a signature activity of the National Center for Family Literacy, is the largest and most comprehensive conference for educators, community leaders, philanthropists and government officials dedicated to family literacy.

Session topics will highlight innovative approaches to helping families achieve their goals through literacy. Speakers will include Loriene Roy, American Library Association; David W. Murphy, Better World Books; Dorothy Kauffman, Center for Applied Linguistics; Peter DeBenedittis, author and consultant; Karen L. Mapp, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Faith Rogow, Insighters Educational Consulting; Christopher J. Lonigan, Florida State University; and Cristina Jose-Kampfner, Latino Health Access.

The Conference will be held March 29 –31, 2008, in Louisville, Kentucky.

Online registration is available now! Brochures will be mailed in October. Visit www.famlit.org/conference for details.

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Update: Room to Read

Posted by admin on 09.28.2007 at 7:19 am

Hey everyone, use this link to see a great page about Room to Read, a brief history and some talk about what’s going on with them today.  A must read for anyone working with them and a interesting read for anyone who would come to this blog!

RtR @ MSN news

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Update: Worldfund!

Posted by admin on 09.28.2007 at 7:14 am

The following letter is an email update from Luanne Zurlo, founder and director of Worldfund, our Latin American partner.

Dear Friends:

Worldfund is pleased to be an invited participant at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), which is currently taking place in New York City, and where I write to you from today!  Worldfund is proposing two projects at the CGI, both Mexico-focused: an intensive training program for public school teachers; and, the opening of five top-quality Mano Amiga schools in impoverished border communities.

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Exciting news from Books for Africa!

Posted by admin on 09.25.2007 at 9:23 am

[ed: The following letter is from Pat Plonski of Books for Africa to David Murphy, CEO of Better World Books, it talks about the exciting steps that BFA and BWB are taking to make more impact and make sure the money that you help raise is going to the right places!]

Hello David–

Just wanted to show you these latest numbers regarding the incredible impact being made by the Better World Books Fund of Books for Africa in just the last two and one half months. Including the container that we just sent yesterday to Ghana, the Better World Books Fund has leveraged the delivery of 13 containers of books (400,000 books) to eight countries valued at $2.3 million. We have shipped to Kenya, Tanzania, Guinea, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Algeria, and Ghana. Not bad for 12 weeks! The establishment of the Better World Books Fund has frankly transformed our shipping operation by allowing Books for Africa to leverage donations from individuals who cannot afford to pay for a full container, and by allowing us to ship to countries never before served by BFA. Book shipments at Books for Africa are up dramatically this fiscal year, and are in fact on a track to increase by at least 50% over last year.

So that’s the latest. Shipments are way up in large part to the Better World Books Fund. About half of our shipments over the past 12 weeks have been in collaboration with Better World Books. Of course, those regular payments designated for unrestricted funding (which we receive from you on a monthly basis) to underwrite our ongoing operations are also coming in very handy.

Thanks much for all you and the Better World Books team is doing. We expect to reach our goal of shipping 20 million books to Africa next year and our collaboration with BWB has been a key element in our success.

–Pat

Patrick Plonski
Executive Director
Books for Africa

Help End the Book Famine in Africa! View the BFA Story

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NCFL Update!

Posted by admin on 09.11.2007 at 8:35 am

I received this today from our partner, The National Center for Family Literacy, and wanted to share it with everyone.  NCFL is doing great work and this press release…..timed to coincide with the celebration of International Literacy Day (September 8^th)……is a great way to draw attention to the issue of illiteracy in our own country……

David W. Murphy
President and CEO
Better World Books

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USA Today Op-Ed by Sharon Darling, NCFL President

Posted by admin on 08.14.2007 at 10:14 am

USA Today just published a letter written by Sharon Darling, the president & founder of the National Center for Family Literacy. The letter was in response to an article last week (8/9/07, “Hispanic growth extends eastward“) about Hispanic population growth in the U.S. – here’s an excerpt:

…Questions were raised about how this population pattern will affect school budgets and how newcomers can be transformed into workers and taxpayers. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the statistics: The nation’s largest and fastest growing minority is also the only one that experienced a decline in literacy from 1992 to 2003. It’s no coincidence, then, that in 2001, Hispanic dropout rates were about four times higher than those for whites. But the dropout rate for Hispanic students who speak English well is only 16%, compared with 59% for those who do not, according to a 2003 report by the Pew Hispanic Center.

The key to meeting the immediate and long-term needs of this population is to focus on intergenerational learning. The National Center for Family Literacy has piloted programs in large cities with substantial Hispanic populations … Family literacy is a solution on which everyone can agree.

Click here to read the article in full on USA Today’s website.

Have your say » | Tagged Our Partners, literacy statistics, NCFL, Our Partners, partner updates, Sharon Darling, USA Today

Room to Read Newsletter

Posted by admin on 08.13.2007 at 11:20 am

Room to Read’s summer newsletter is now available online! It’s packed with articles about the launch of their Room to Grow girls’ scholarship program in Laos, a local lanuage publishing conference in Nepal, a panel on traditional African storytelling and Room to Read’s plans for International Literacy Day, coming up September 8th.

There’s also a great article about the Better World Books/Room to Read partnership – from now till the end of the year, $5 from the sale of every Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book on www.BetterWorld.com will go to funding the establishment of libraries in Nepal and Sri Lanka! Our goal is to raise $15,000 to construct 5 libraries, so if you haven’t picked up a copy yet, click here to get one today!

Have your say » | Tagged Impact, Our Partners, betterworld.com, harry potter, Impact, International Literacy Day, Our Partners, partner updates, room to read

Diversity Journal Recognizes NCFL Program

Posted by Jack on 07.31.2007 at 2:03 pm

Introduced in Head Start centers in three U.S. cities, NCFL’s La Lectura En Familia (Families Reading Together) has shown great promise in improving Hispanic parents’ ability to support their child’s language and literacy development.

Results from the project, which was funded by Pitney Bowes Literacy and Education Fund, were published in the May/June issue of Profiles in Diversity Journal, a national publication that is read by more than 1 million corporate, diversity, education and philanthropic leaders.

Children participating in the pilot program showed significant gains in reading, and parents reported increases in reading to their children and visiting the library with their family.

Check it out!

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Meheba Refugee Settlement in Zambia

Posted by admin on 12.13.2006 at 10:18 am

I recently received this email from Damon Luloff, a grad student at Boston University who has worked on multiple book drives through FORGE (www.forgeprogram.org) at BU. The BU book drives over the past two years have brought in over 7,000 qualifying books for Books for Africa!

Damon has worked in the Meheba refugee settlement in Zambia; he’s been managing a project called PACE (Project for African Community Empowerment). You can read more about Damon’s work on his fascinating blog: http://www.pacenow.blogspot.com/

Hamjambo! It’s been over a month since the last update, and a lot has happened. So this may be a long update. But it’s exciting and will be worth your time to read. I promise.

Both the men’s and women’s projects have quickly transformed from vague ideas to real projects that are being implemented. After deciding on what problems they want to address, both groups have accelerated into the implementation phase, meeting with me five times a week and often meeting for hours at a time on their own, even as their work load has increased due to cultivation. Let me fill you in on the development of each project over the past month. Ladies first…

The women are aiming to help people improve their harvest, the primary source of food and income for almost everyone in the community. They decided the most effective way to help people improve their harvests in the short- and long-term is by providing them with fertilizer and hiring a professional agricultural extension worker to give free workshops for anyone interested in the community. Most farmers are simply too poor to purchase fertilizer which, if used properly, can triple their yields. The workshops will educate people on the most effective modern farming techniques and help them to understand the science behind farming, enabling them to manage their farms more effectively instead of blindly doing whatever others are doing in hopes that it will work.

The women immediately realized that if they wanted to help farmers improve their harvest this year they would have to work hard and fast. People would be planting soon, and one of the two types of fertilizer needs to be applied at the same time that the seeds are planted. The women needed to hurry, but could not proceed hastily. They were facing a serious challenge–determining what price they would need to charge people in return for the loans of fertilizer. Instead of charging people up-front, the women are loaning people fertilizer in return for corn in May, after people have harvested their crops. The market rate for a fifty kilogram bag of fertilizer is about $32. The government subsidizes fertilizer for registered cooperatives which only have to pay $12 for the same bag of fertilizer. Unfortunately, it takes six months to register as a cooperative, meaning that we had to purchase the fertilizer at the market rate. People in Meheba are not accustomed to having to pay the market rate. They expected to pay no more than one hundred kilograms of corn per bag of fertilizer. We eventually calculated that we could make a slim but adequate profit if we charged people one hundred forty kilograms of corn per bag of fertilizer. When we conducted a last-minute feasibility analysis to see if people would be willing to pay that much per bag of fertilizer, only a handful of people said yes. We had cut the expenses a much as possible and reduced the profit margin substantially. There was nothing else we could do. We had to either go for it or wait until next year. But quite a few people in the community were expecting to receive loans and had prepared their fields in anticipation of applying fertilizer. (Apparently, how one prepares his field depends on whether he is planning on using fertilizer or not.) Those people would be very disappointed if the fertilizer was not distributed.
Read more…

Have your say » | Tagged Impact, Our Partners, africa, FORGE, Impact, Our Partners, partner updates

Exciting NCFL Update!!!

Posted by admin on 11.10.2006 at 5:20 pm

Our wonderful U.S. literacy partner, National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL), released an impressive tabloid for International Literacy Day on September 8^th 2006 (previously blogged here) and it’s now available to download from their website!

Titled “Newspaper Inspiration: New Generation,” the 16-page tabloid features engaging articles and activities, all geared towards making reading the local newspaper a family affair. The literacy information and activities for parents and children of all ages include:

• Activities to improve reading and match comprehension
• Parent resources
• Word games and activity calendars
• Literacy volunteer opportunities

Last year’s version ran in more than 400 newspapers throughout the nation with a combined circulation of more than 25,000,000!

You can download the beautifully designed tabloid from NCFL’s site: http://www.famlit.org/site/c.gtJWJdMQIsE/b.1466911/apps/s/content.asp?ct=2992071

In addition, NCFL recently sent Better World Books a series of stories about the parents that benefit from their family literacy programs. Here’s a feature on Carolina Hernandez, a family literacy student through the Even Start program at McFerran Elementary in Louisville , KY.

Originally from Mexico , Carolina is married with two children. She has lived in Louisville for six years. With just six months in the Even Start program, she has already learned a lot.  The Even Start program helped Hernandez keep the job she’s had for two years. The money she earns at her job helps to support her family and she also sends what money she can to her parents in Mexico . Although the program has helped her maintain employment, her children are her priority. She wants to learn English so that she can help them with their homework.

In her own words: “I like to be independent. When I arrived here, if I needed to go with a doctor, I had to call a translator or pay money. Now I can do it myself. The important thing that I like is I can help my children with their homework. Also, it’s very important to me that I can answer my son’s questions. I think it is basic for their education.”

Stay tuned for more great stories like Carolina’s!

Have your say » | Tagged Impact, Our Partners, International Literacy Day, NCFL, partner updates