Grantees

Provide family literacy opportunities to families with young children

COTS offers specialized programming for children in our family shelter to reduce the negative impacts of homelessness. We propose expanding this by offering an education-centered curriculum in shelter, focused on developing healthy life tools children can transfer to their school experience. This curriculum, designed for pre-K-12th grade, will provide children with healthy psycho-emotional tools: healthy attachments, behavioral regulation, impulse control, logical reasoning and a healthy self-concept. We will work with parents to help reinforce this learning in their home. These tools will strengthen overall literacy, thinking skills, learning strategies, social interactions, and psycho-emotional regulation.

An early childhood literacy program that focuses on teaching emotional competency skills to reinforce reading comprehension and social skills in order to prepare children for kindergarten.

On the 2022 reading NAEP, only 43% of VT 4th-graders scored proficient or above—& only 19% of children in poverty. Reading well and liking to read are tied to further education, well-paying jobs—and a good life as an adult. Everybody Wins! Vermont helps children love to read by matching them one-on-one with volunteer reading mentors who share books & literacy activities and build friendships weekly at school. Children are exposed to new topics & discussions, enhance self-esteem, and show gains in reading skills, self-esteem, and overall classroom performance. Everybody Wins! Connects children with their communities and citizens with their local schools. One principal: "Everybody Wins! Is our most important connection with our community."

Vermont Humanities Camps are week-long summer day programs that engage at-risk middle school students in fun, rewarding educational activities. Held at approximately 14 middle schools each summer, they are run by two teachers at each school who recruit students that may struggle with reading or learning in a traditional classroom. Students rave about the camps; they are, for some students, their first positive interaction with reading, school, and perhaps with learning itself. Not only do the camps strengthen reading and self-expression, they also change students’ attitudes dramatically about reading, learning, school, and self-identification as learners. The camps are free for parents and provide food for students.

Literacy for Life is a program-wide initiative to expand & promote early literacy opportunities for children and famlies in the Champlain Islands

A literacy mentoring program in White River Jct., VT.

Youth learn and exhibit increased knowledge in their critical thinking skills related to their media consumpton and youth will report a decrease in favorable attitudes regarding drug us.