FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 16, 2006
Contact: Angie Callahan, Director of Children’s Education Services, 889.9407
WHRO AWARDED “READY TO LEAD IN LITERACY” GRANT
Hampton Roads: WHRO is embarking on a comprehensive training program designed to help parents in high-need situations develop skills to help their children with early language development and literacy skills. The training program will be offered to parents in three targeted groups that have been identified as high-need: Even Start programs in school divisions, families of deployed military personnel, and urban public library patrons. The $75,000 Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant to fund this initiative will be paid over a three year period.
The training program will consist primarily of face-to-face workshops supported by PBS ready-to-learn television programming and associated interstitials and supporting print collateral. WHRO will directly work with 705 families and 1,435 children in the training program.
The Virginia Department of Education administers the federally funded Even Start Family Literacy program designed to improve the academic achievement of young children and their parents, especially in the area of reading. WHRO has been an integral part of this initiative locally for the past five years providing dozens of highly regarded early literacy workshops.
Currently four school divisions in Hampton Roads offer such services: two in Norfolk, one in Portsmouth, and one in Suffolk. In the coming year, WHRO will continue providing monthly early childhood literacy workshops at these locations free of charge, and will add a program in Newport News. In total, these programs will serve at least 65 families and 160 children.
WHRO will continue to work with the Navy Family Service Center to provide early childhood literacy and language development workshops to spouses and family members of deployed service members. A special reading program is being developed for summer 2006. The goal is to reach 370 families and 700 children.
Last year WHRO partnered with Norfolk Public Libraries to promote “Reading Rockets,” a national reading initiative that looks at how children learn to read, why so many struggle, and how we can help them. This year WHRO will expand the partnership, adding Virginia Beach Public Libraries. The television component Launching Young Readers was broadcast on WHRO from November through January 2006. WHRO worked with the public libraries to provide a series of workshops for parents using the “Reading Rockets” program, with a goal of reaching 270 families and 575 children.