The Words Alive Reader: December 18th, 2020

Welcome to The Words Alive Reader, a regular newsletter keeping you up-to-date with the latest in how we've been connecting children, teens, and families to the power of reading. What have we been up to and how can you help? Read on to find out!

This newsletter, in addition to our blog and social media content, is written by us, a cohort of volunteers! Do you love writing and have an interest in helping Words Alive create this type of content? We'd love your help! Email our Volunteer Coordinator, Robyn, to learn more.

- Zoe, Eli and Titiksha, Words Alive Storytelling Team

Words Alive Alumni Give Back

A screenshot from a call with some of our Westreich Scholarship alumni! Lexi (top left) has connected us to the organization where she now works.

We are always thrilled about any opportunity to get books to students, but we're especially excited about our new partnership with SAY (Social Advocates for Youth) San Diego because we are working with one of our Westreich Scholarship alumni! Lexi graduated from San Diego State University last year and is now working as a case manager for this wonderful organization. We loved supporting Lexi through her college journey and we're honored to be able to partner with her now! Thanks to this connection, more than 500 kids will be receiving a new book this holiday season. 

Help us develop even more partnerships by purchasing supplies from our Amazon wishlist! Many of these items will go towards innovative programming at Monarch School, Lexi’s alma mater. 

Become a Champion for Youth

A graphic with text that reads “Become a Champion for Words Alive This Winter!” above the “Champions for Youth” logo.

Words Alive is constantly seeking new ways to inspire a love of reading and promote educational equity. Help us reach this goal by signing up to become a part of Words Alive's Champions For Youth campaign!

Champions for Youth is an exciting peer-to-peer fundraising campaign that runs from December through January. When you create a fundraising page, you can inspire your friends and family to invest in the joy of reading. Every $10 you help raise will enable us to provide a bedtime story to a child.

The best part? The funds you raise will be amplified by gifts from Farners Insurance and the Century Club of San Diego. Sign up for an information session here!

Thank You, EY Page Turners!

An infographic titled “EY and Page Turners By the Numbers.” The infographic includes the statistics: 275 book reviews; 28, 334 pages read for Page Turners; 51 titles reviewed including What Color is My World? by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Come On In by Adi Alsaid, and Nino Wrestles the World by Yuyi Morales; 546 hours spent reading; 211 Page Turners; and “Want to learn more? Visit us at www.wordsalive.org/page-turners”

We’re excited to say that our partnership with EY has brought 211 new virtual volunteers into our Page Turners program from all across the country! Together, they’ve read more than 28,000 pages and written 275 book reviews to help us identify the best books for our curriculum.

And they've had a great time doing it! "We appreciate the opportunity to live our values by volunteering with you...Thank you for making it so easy for our people to give back during this unprecedented year," the EY Ripples team says. Thank you, EY, for helping us make a difference! 

If you’d like to join them as a Page Turner, visit our website to learn more.

Virtual Family Literacy Program with Oceanside Public Library

A young child draws with colored pencils in a notebook.

Recently, we partnered with the Oceanside Public Library to create a successful fully-remote version of our Family Literacy Program. Eleven families joined us for the virtual course, which pursued a bilingual approach to literacy.

Through books, crafts, and songs in both English and Spanish, families and their preschool children built key early literacy skills—and just as importantly, a love for reading! One of the participating families says their three-year-old is still talking about the program and even reads to his stuffed animals now. We love it!

If you'd like to help us inspire more families to read together, check out our volunteer opportunities here!

1,780 Brand New Books for Kids

A picture of our Executive Director, Rachael, with lots of boxes of donated books!

San Diego showed off the spirit of giving this week, as we received 1,780 books for kids and teens. We want to say a huge thank you to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the San Diego Council on Literacy for their generous donations, and hope you’ll consider joining them. Help us get even more books into kids' hands this holiday season by donating to our Champions for Youth campaign!

Stock Donations

A young child holds up a sign that says “I’m a Summer Super Reader!”

Donating stock to Words Alive is a meaningful investment in our life-changing literacy work! It's a simple process with many benefits:

1. You receive a charitable income-tax deduction for the full fair-market value of the stock at the time of the gift.*

2. You incur no capital gains tax on the increased value of the stock.*

Words Alive has an account at Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. Your gift must be postmarked by December 31 to qualify for a deduction in that tax year. A stockbroker or trust officer also can arrange for a year-end gift of stock from your account.
To learn more or to make a donation, click here!   

*subject to IRS deduction limits​​​​​​​

Donate here to support Words Alive!

Plot Twist: Gayle Early

Welcome to our new blog series, Plot Twist! Here, we'll be sharing the stories of people in the Words Alive community — stories of change, growth, and maybe a few surprising twists! We hope that through these stories, you'll get to know our community a little better and see the power of literacy come to life.

A picture of Gayle.

Meet Gayle Early! Gayle is a freelance writer and new volunteer who found us recently through the Californians For All Summer of Service project. Though she’s only been with Words Alive for a few months, her passion and enthusiasm for our mission overflows from the minute you meet her! In this interview, she shares her experience supporting in-person volunteer opportunities during the pandemic and her desire to share the magic of stories with others. (Note: all in-person volunteering took place earlier in the year, in accordance with county and state guidelines and restrictions. Stay safe!)

Gayle adores reading books of all kinds, which makes volunteering with Words Alive a natural fit. She jokes that she’ll even read the phone book if you let her! Years ago, at a boring dinner party, she opened a volume about the difference between oil- and water-based paints. It was the only book she could find, so she started reading without hesitation. “I was like, ’I can learn something here!’” she remembers, laughing. “If there's a book around, I'll pick it up,” she declares. “When you come to my house, the most I have of any object is books,” she says happily. “I would just give my last nickel for a book at a secondhand store.”

Gayle reading with one of her daughters when she was little.

She made sure to pass on this love of stories and reading to her own children, reading aloud to them even before they were born! She also volunteered as a reading tutor in her daughters’ school, where she found a lot of meaning in helping struggling students learn to enjoy reading. “Stories are magical and books are magic,” Gayle emphasizes. “I wanted to join this organization to have a little bit more of that magic with other kids besides my own.”

And Gayle doesn’t hesitate to turn her passion into action. When we asked for volunteers, her response was simple: “I was all in!”  

One of her first assignments was picking up book donations from other volunteers who were at high risk for COVID-19 and unable to leave home. “I was really happy to help with that for them, so that they didn’t need to go drop anything off or drive anywhere,” she says. She has also helped process large book donations from ReaderLink, which she really enjoyed. “That was so much fun!” she says. “Diving into an entire room full of brand-new books—that was pretty exciting for me.”

Volunteers sorting book donations. (Note: All in-person volunteering took place earlier in the year, in accordance with county and state guidelines and restrictions. Stay safe!)

She also loved the ability to safely connect with other volunteers, masks and all, over a passion for stories as they sorted through the titles. “It was like the highlight of that particular week of otherwise complete isolation,” Gayle says. “It was also a good workout!” she laughs, describing the process of moving boxes of books up and down the stairs.

Ever since she was little, reading has played an important role in Gayle's life. “Books saved my life when I was growing up, they really did,” she says, describing the library in the small town where she grew up. “I would go to that library and just get a stack of books and just escape into other worlds as a child.” One of her favorite books was a children’s science fiction novel by Eleanor Cameron called The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. In the book, two young boys build a rocket ship and have adventures with aliens on a faraway planet.

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, one of Gayle’s favorite childhood books.

“As a little kid, I was in that rocket flying out to outer space, where the aliens were actually friendly and sweet and kind and funny,” she remembers. Instead of fear of the unknown and unfamiliar, this book represented “exploration and adventure and friendship” to Gayle. “It really paved my mentality for being a curious person, instead of a fear-based person,” she says. She also credits the literacy skills she picked up from devouring so many books with helping her excel in school.

Today, she hopes that she can help others have similar experiences with the transformative power of books. “I want that for kids in our community who might not have the support or may come from a tougher home life like I did,” she explains. “Reading is an escape from the reality that someone might be in, but it also expands the world,” she says. Through a good book, a kid in California has the opportunity to go to San Francisco in a story, or New York, or out to the country, or into the ocean—the possibilities for learning and exploring are endless.

“Stories can be healing, and stories can help you feel less alone. You recognize that some things are things we all have in common.

”

And as they expand our worlds, stories also bring us together. “Stories can be healing, and stories can help you feel less alone. You recognize that some things are things we all have in common,” Gayle says, a reminder that feels more important than ever right now. “Literacy is about empowering everybody to recognize and show up with their unique abilities and talents, because we need everybody, as a society,” she says. “Literacy is one way to reach people to show them what the possibilities are.”

Gayle, thank you for bringing your time, energy, and enthusiasm to Words Alive! We know that your story will inspire more volunteers to raise their hands and say, “I’m all in!”

The Words Alive Reader: August 12, 2020

Welcome to The Words Alive Reader, a regular newsletter keeping you up-to-date with the latest in how we've been connecting children, teens, and families to the power of reading. What have we been up to and how can you help? Read on to find out!

This newsletter, in addition to our blog and social media content, is written by a cohort of volunteers! Do you love writing and have an interest in helping Words Alive create this type of content? Email Robyn, our Volunteer Coordinator. 

#GreatSanDiegoBookGiveaway

An image of a young child wearing a face mask and holding up a sign that says “I’m a Summer Super Reader!”

If you're reading this newsletter, you probably know that books are essential in supporting a young child's growth. We also know that too many children from underserved communities in San Diego are at home without books of their own during this pandemic. Words Alive, the Molina Foundation, the San Diego Council on Literacy, and the San Diego Public Library all came together this past week for The Great San Diego Book Giveaway, a campaign that resulted in 325 families (all of whom participated this spring in the remote version of our programming) taking home brand-new books for the entire family to enjoy!

Learn more about the event here on our blog and donate to help children and families build their home libraries!

Readers in the Heights

An image of Readers in the Heights resources: a book, reading guide, and craft supplies.

For the 5th year in a row, we’ve partnered with United Way of San Diego for Readers in the Heights, a collaborative effort between multiple San Diego organizations to engage families in weekly literacy and self-expression activities to help prevent the summer slide. This year, the program is more important than ever due to COVID-19 and the learning losses expected from transitions to distance learning. This is exactly why we’ve partnered with the staff from the Karen Organization and City Heights CDC to deliver our tested programming to families. 

Even more exciting! Programming is taking place in five languages including Karen and Burmese. Do you want to help us translate our resources into different languages? Take a look at our new virtual volunteer opportunities!​

Upcoming (Virtual) Events:

Celebrating 100 Days of Words Alive Story Station! Watch on Facebook Live @WordsAliveSD every day at 2 pm PT/5 pm ET.

Special Novel Ideas Tour!

Join us for a behind-the-scenes tour of our Novel Ideas interactive online gallery on Tues, 8/18 from 3:00-3:30 p.m. Sign up here. 

100th Day of Story Station!

TOMORROW marks the 100th day of Story Station! We have been hosting daily read alouds since the pandemic hit to spread joy, and engage our little learners with fun and inspiring stories. In July alone, Story Station reached 38,000+ people! Join us for our 100th Story Station at 2 p.m. PT tomorrow, August 12th, on Facebook Live. ​​​​​​​

Trending on #QuaranTEENS:

#QuaranTEENS: Prompts to cope with COVID & lessons from the news.

Top stories and activities trending this week on #QuaranTEENS, our online platform helping teens navigate and cope with the COVID-19 crisis and distance learning through reading and writing:

1. Pandemic Podcast

2. The Coronavirus in Six Words

3. Just Breathe

Donate Here to Support Words Alive!

#LetsReadSD with the San Diego Council on Literacy

Did you know Words Alive is a proud affiliate of the San Diego Council on Literacy (SDCOL)?

For the past 30 years, the SDCOL has worked to bring awareness to the literacy cause in San Diego by uniting the community through advocacy, partnerships, resources, and coordination. As a convener, the SDCOL also brings together 30 affiliate literacy providers from across the county for networking, professional development, and resource sharing.

These opportunities have undoubtedly benefited Words Alive by connecting us with expertise of other passionate providers doing whatever it takes to create a more literate San Diego. And together, we certainly achieve more. Last year, the 30 affiliate partners of the SDCOL delivered no-cost literacy-building services to more than 170,000 children, youth, and adults across San Diego.

One of the central goals of the SDCOL is to instill the importance of literacy in the region. On that front, in 2014 the SDCOL spearheaded a Region that Reads campaign fostering partnerships with the 19 mayors of San Diego County in which each would support the work of the SDCOL. It also encouraged mayors to designate a liaison from each city to ensure greater connectivity and communication between the cities and literacy providers on the ground. Words Alive is proud to have contributed towards this effort as a member of the public policy committee. The SDCOL also shares resources with its affiliate programs, where most recently, the SDCOL contributed to our Read Aloud Program with a donation of new, high-quality children's books that will be distributed through our program-wide giveaway later this month.

Currently, the SDCOL is promoting their #LetsReadSD campaign to empower individuals to share their love of reading on social media. We encourage you to "get caught reading" this month, and learn more about the SDCOL and its affiliate programs to see the amazing work we do together!

Click here for more information about the San Diego Council on Literacy and its affiliated programs, and on the image below for more on the SDCOL's #LetsReadSD campaign.

The Gift of Reading

Literacy is the foundation of our success. It allows us to learn, to teach, and to make change in the community. Our three programs tackle literacy issues among children, teens, and families, each with the shared goal of creating life-long learners. Establishing a commitment to reading gives individuals the confidence to change their communities and take charge of their life.

Our programs inspire a commitment to literacy early in life so children and teens do not remain illiterate into their adult lives. Our Read Aloud Program sends trained volunteers into elementary classrooms and engages children with stories. Teen Services ensures young adults have a space to discuss novels and can pursue higher education with our Westreich Scholarship Program. The Family Literacy Program empowers parents to make reading a priority in their home and teaches effective methods of doing so. Each of our programs aims to prevent illiteracy later in life by engaging children, teens, and families with reading early on in their development.

Words Alive is proud to offer these programs that empower participants in all stages of life. In order for us to continue giving the gift of reading, we need your generosity and support. This holiday season, when reading a card, your favorite novel, or this blog post, be thankful for the opportunities you had to become a developed reader. Help Words Alive create this same experience for others in San Diego by making a donation. Your generosity will help advocate for literacy and allow us to give the gift that keeps on giving. 

Literacy is important; it is the foundation of success in our society, and Words Alive strives to ensure we all have the same opportunities to achieve our goals.

Words Alive Awarded Community Partner of the Year by Neighborhood House Association

(Pictured left to right are: Dr. Alfonso Rodriguez - Director of Research and Training, NHA, Carter Anderson - WA Read Aloud Program Manager, Kimberly Maraya - WA Read Aloud volunteer at Miller Head Start, Sharon Gruby - WA Read Aloud volunteer at McGill School of Success and Read Aloud Program co-chair, Terri Hamlin -WA Read Aloud volunteer at McGill School of Success and Read Aloud Program co-chair, Amanda Bonds - WA Senior Program Manager)

Words Alive is honored to be recognized by the Neighborhood House Association as the 2016 Community Partner of the Year! For the past 5 years, Words Alive, our dedicated volunteers and the NHA have worked together to bring quality reading experiences, parent education and book ownership to Head Start families who need it most. We all agree that a strong literacy foundation is a key factor in scholastic success and we look forward to accomplishing more great thing together! 

At Words Alive, we believe that reading is a cornerstone skill and our mission is to open opportunities for success by cultivating a commitment to reading. Since 2011, we have partnered with the Neighborhood House Association and their collaboration sites within the San Diego Unified School District to bring the love of reading to preschool age children from underserved communities across San Diego. Through weekly read aloud sessions led by trained volunteers, parent workshops, lending libraries and book donations, we have worked alongside schools and families to build a culture of reading. The Neighborhood House has been an important partner in this endeavor and has worked with us to continually deepen our impact on literacy readiness among the families who need it most. Below is a snap shot of what we have accomplished together between 2011 and 2015 (the clock is still ticking on the current school year!):

·        Words Alive has donated 20,255 new and gently used books (given to children to build their home libraries and to site to create center-based libraries where families can borrow books from the same place they bring their children each day) .

·        Volunteers have dedicated 1,633 hours to reading aloud with children in the classroom, helping students cultivate a love of stories and wonder about their world.

·        Words Alive staff has led 255 hours of parent education workshops, helping parents to recognize and grow their power as their child’s first teacher.

These efforts have aligned nicely with the NHA’s three year goals to:

·        Engage the whole community in working together to ensure that children are ready for school (school readiness).

·        Develop programs, competencies and linkages that support and promote parent empowerment and self-sufficiency. (Parents – empowerment/Self-Sufficiency)

Other WA volunteers who read at our Head Start locations but were not able to attend NHA’s Volunteer event include; Sharon Gruby, Charlotte Germundson, Tora Grossman, Terri Hamlin, Christy Moore, Charline Meulemans, Kim Maraya, Cynthia Shenkman, Kathy Zybelman, Linda Sorrentino, Valentina Jones-Wagner