Raising A Reader Honored among Nation’s Top Social Entrepreneurs
January 2006
Raising A Reader, an award-winning early literacy program offered locally through Child Start Incorporated (CSI), is among the 25 winners of the 2006 Fast Company Magazine/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Awards. Raising A Reader, originally developed and launched by Peninsula Community Foundation in San Mateo, California in 1999, now reaches more than 56,000 children annually in 80 communities across 27 states and four countries, including Mexico, Botswana and Malaysia. In Napa and Solano Counties, Raising A Reader is offered through CSI to more than 1,900 children and their families, primarily at Head Start and Early Head Start sites throughout both counties.
The Social Capitalist Awards honor nonprofit “social entrepreneurs” who combine creativity and ingenuity with business solutions to address the most challenging social problems. Raising A Reader is the “youngest” organization to receive this prestigious national award in 2006. Raising A Reader and the 24 other award winners are featured in the January 2006 issue of Fast Company Magazine.
“Raising A Reader addresses a national crisis in this country, where one in three children enters kindergarten lacking basic pre-reading skills,” said Carol Welsh Gray, president of Raising A Reader. “We are thrilled that Raising A Reader’s methodology and impact are being recognized by Fast Company, a magazine known for profiling successful models of entrepreneurship and innovation.”
Raising A Reader provides children and their parents with the books, encouragement and support they need to establish a regular routine of sharing books and reading at home. Working in partnership with preschools, child care providers, community family centers, and library literacy programs, Raising A Reader loans books at no cost to families through a weekly book exchange. Children are excited to receive bright red bags each week filled with beautiful, carefully selected, age-appropriate books.
“Raising A Reader has been successful both in terms of innovation and outcomes,” said Raising A Reader program manager Linda Cranor. “The book bag exchange is key to promoting family participation. You should see the children’s faces when they come in each week to get a new set of books! And the feedback we get from parents is overwhelmingly positive. They are watching their children blossom with a love for books and learning. The parents improve their own reading skills and provide a solid foundation for their children’s capacity for lifelong learning.”