Grants Promote Family Literacy

Almost four dozen public libraries are about to prove that a little money can go a long way. As recent recipients of Viburnum Foundation grants, 45 small libraries in the South will receive $3,000 each to support family literacy projects. But these aren't just run of the mill programs—they specifically target families of children with low literacy levels and incarcerated teens and parents.

Although most educators have never heard of the Viburnum Family Literacy Project, which is administered by the Library of Congress's Center for the Book, the program has been quietly doing good work for the last five years.

This year marks the second Viburnum grant for Kris McGinniss, a youth outreach librarian at the Tucson-Pima (AZ) County Public Library, who works with women in the minimum security Pima County detention center to become "literate and connect with their children." Almost all have no memory of being read to as children, and McGinniss helps them build self-confidence by getting them to write down their feelings and their life stories. This year she expects to work with about 450 women.

Teresa Colvin, a children's and young adult librarian at the Troy (AL) Public Library, is another second-year grant recipient. She plans to continue her workshops for parents who read at the third-grade level and below. Like many librarians serving families with young children, Colvin supports studies showing that kids need exposure to books, stories, and language in the formative years before beginning school. Her project was designed in cooperation with the local Head Start program and Trojan Learning Center at Troy State University, along with a state program, Kids and Kin, which builds child-development skills among mothers and other family members. Colvin plans to help 100 children, but acknowledges that she could help five times as many if she had sufficient funds.

Based on these examples, first-time Viburnum grant recipients such as Willie Broudaway can set their sights high. The reference and young adult specialist at the Val Verde County Library in Del Rio, TX, plans to create a project that will match up to 25 Hispanic teens—including those who have had trouble with the law—with adults to write a history of being a teen in Del Rio. Until now, the teens had no incentive to read, Broudaway says. The project will be exhibited this spring at the Casa de la Cultura, a local Latino cultural organization.

Viburnum's annual grants target libraries in 10 states—Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina—and applicants must already work with at least two partners, such as Head Start programs, schools, and community health agencies.

The grants aren't large, admits Virginia Mathews, a consultant at the Library of Congress. "But we train the librarians and their partners to leverage the money into donations from the United Way, Wal-Mart, and local banks." Mathews sees the Viburnum grants as a way to make a big difference in small rural communities where kids enter school with the deck stacked against them. For more details, visit www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/viburnum.html.