College and Partners Help Children Learn to Read

Through a grant from the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service (ICVS), Grinnell’s Campaign for Grade Level Reading will receive funding to hire a team of 14 AmeriCorps members to work in organizations throughout the community in order to advance the early literacy project.

The AmeriCorps members will support work in each of the campaign’s five key focus areas:

• summer learning loss
• chronic absence
• school readiness
• healthy readers
• parent engagement

The grant will also provide AmeriCorps members to support the community’s graduate skills gap initiative as well as core “backbone” infrastructure such as community and volunteer engagement.

Grinnell College, the lead applicant on the grant, is one of 21 organizations across Iowa that will receive funding from the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service. “Supporting community-wide ‘multi-focus’ partnerships was a new priority for AmeriCorps this year. When we learned about the opportunity, it seemed like a perfect fit for Grinnell – especially to help advance the partnership that’s already begun with the Campaign for Grade Level Reading,” said Monica Chavez-Silva, director of Community Enhancement and Engagement.

As a grant recipient, Grinnell College will coordinate the grant and host at least one AmeriCorps member. Other AmeriCorps team members will be placed in community organizations that are interested in advancing the work, but don’t necessarily have the staffing capacity within their regular operations.

“That’s why this grant is so important to Grinnell,” said Chavez-Silva. “There are so many organizations that want to be part of the effort, but everyone has other priorities that they need to focus on too. With the AmeriCorps members, partner organizations will have the extra staffing to be as active and involved as they want to be.”

The Campaign for Grade Level Reading is a nationwide effort to make sure that all children can read at grade level by third grade, as third grade reading is an important predictor of high school graduation. Based on the idea that schools cannot succeed alone, the campaign gives community stakeholders a framework to work together in support of this goal.  In Grinnell, the campaign is just getting started. In August of 2014, roughly 20 community organizations convened to learn about the effort and unanimously agreed to submit a letter of intent to join the nationwide program. In February and May, stakeholders met again to begin initial planning.  

This is the second grant that Grinnell has received for the Campaign for Grade Level Reading. Earlier this year, the Iowa Council of Foundations (ICoF) granted a $2,500 capacity grant to Grinnell, through the Greater Poweshiek Community Foundation, a member organization of ICoF.

In addition to the grants from ICVS and ICoF, the Claude W. and Dolly Ahrens Foundation has offered to contribute $10,000 to encourage other community funders to consider providing funding to support the program. CDAF’s funding will be used to support programming in each of the grant’s focus areas. “To receive this type of state-wide funding is a great opportunity for our community to embrace the Campaign for Grade Level Reading and we are pleased to be able to offer additional financial support that is needed,” said Julie Gosselink, president and CEO of the Claude W. and Dolly Ahrens Foundation.  “We are hopeful that our gift will encourage other community members to contribute to this initiative.”

Learn more — including how to get involved — at Grinnell’s Campaign for Grade Level Reading.