RAISING A READER® RECEIVES
PRESTIGIOUS FAST COMPANY MAGAZINE AWARD

For the second year in a row, Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Raising A Reader® was selected by Fast Company magazine and The Monitor Group as one of the 43 winners of the 2007 Social Capitalist Awards.

The Social Capitalist Awards honor nonprofits, or “social entrepreneurs,” that combine creativity and ingenuity with business solutions to address social ills such as poor healthcare in developing nations; unequal access to education; homelessness; unemployment and substance abuse. The 2007 award winners were featured in Fast Company’s December/January 2007 cover story. Raising A Reader will be recognized at a ceremony in New York City on January 9.

“Raising A Reader addresses a national crisis in this country, where one in three children enters kindergarten lacking basic pre-reading skills,” said Carol Welsh Gray, of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. “We are thrilled that Raising A Reader’s methodology and impact are being recognized by Fast Company, a magazine that highlights successful models of entrepreneurship and innovation.”

Raising A Reader was founded by Peninsula Community Foundation in 1999. Now that PCF and Community Foundation Silicon Valley have merged, Raising A Reader will continue on as part of the new Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

“Raising A Reader fits into the new foundation’s vision by being a true catalyst for change and making a meaningful impact in our communities,” said Emmett D. Carson, Ph.D., CEO and president of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. “Our goal is to continue to expand our program and more than double the number of children we reach in both urban and rural settings by 2010.”

Raising A Reader encourages parents of young children (birth to age five) to adopt a daily read-aloud routine with their little ones. The results include: healthy brain development, stronger parent-child bonds and improvement in the early literacy skills that are critical for kindergarten success. Through a child-driven process, Raising A Reader rotates bright red bags filled with the highest quality age-appropriate books into low-income homes each week. The book rotation, combined with research-based training and a strong connection to the local library, motivates even families that are less literate or don’t speak English to establish "book cuddling" routines with their little ones, leading to a love of books that lasts a lifetime.

In just a few years, Raising A Reader has expanded from a San Mateo County Library System pilot program serving 24 classrooms in Northern California, into an award-winning, international program. Today, there are 84 Raising A Reader affiliate partners in 150 communities across 31 states.

"What's particularly exciting about Raising A Reader is that it not only makes a variety of wonderful books available in the home, it also strengthens the parent-child relationship through the book sharing experience," said Mike Honey, program coordinator of Raising A Reader at Catholic Charities, a Raising A Reader affiliate in Santa Clara. "Thanks to the efforts of dedicated and trained daycare providers and preschool teachers, parents learn how to engage their children in storytelling with picture books – even if they themselves struggle with reading. This ensures a meaningful connection between books, parents and children at home."

Locally, 19,000 book bags rotate annually and since 2000, more than 103,000 children have been served in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, with 800 early childhood professionals trained in the Raising A Reader methods. Each year, the program reaches approximately 100,000 children.

“Children are so excited about the program, that they are often the ones to get their parents involved,” said Donna DeFilippo, executive director of Raising A Reader, Massachusetts. “One of our boys who was home sick for several days, convinced his mother to stop by his school and pick up his red book bag so he could continue with the program – it was that important to him!”

A dozen independent evaluations have validated the program’s impact. Findings include:

• A 471 percent increase in the percentage of low-income parents sharing books with their children five or more times each week;
  
• Head Start children participating in Raising A Reader for eight months tested at least twice as high as the national norms for Head Start children in school readiness skills of book knowledge, print concepts and story comprehension;
  
• A 337 percent growth in the percentage of Spanish-speaking parents taking their children to the library at least once a month.