Community Collaboration as a Success Story
Eager to Learn is a grassroots literacy collaboration of about thirty
nonprofit organizations in Austin, Texas. The goal of the group is
to raise the literacy skills in seventy children who have been identified
as needing help. Most of the children are pre-kindergarten and kindergarten
age, and live near I-35 and Highway 183. This area is home for about
one-fourth of all Austin children under the age of five years. Parents
and childcare providers are involved as well in the program. A survey
of the parents indicated that the parents had been unaware of the
fact that learning begins before a child enters school. The parents
in Eager to Learn are finding out that they are their child's
first teacher, and how important interacting with, talking to, and
reading to their child right from the start can be on the child's
brain development and future literacy skills. The ASPIRE Even Start
Program of Communities in Schools is part of the Eager to Learn collaboration.
For more
information, please visit
http://www.theaustinproject.org/what_we_do/early_literacy.php
(Reported by News 8 Austin, Erin Ochoa, June 21, 2004 with input from Kirsten Siegfried, Even Start)
