Recent Grants

The Education and Literacy Fund of the Community Foundation Alliance recently awarded grants totaling more than $61,000 to 10 nonprofit organizations serving early childhood literacy throughout Southwestern Indiana.  Grants were awarded to:

Daviess County Family YMCA

$4,425 to support the launch of a new program entitled "Read and Seed" that will help prepare YMCA childcare preschoolers for success in Kindergarten by offering special programming for the children and engaging the parents/guardians (Counties Served: Daviess, Pike)

Easter Seals Rehabilitation Center

$7,096 to support the implementation of the "ReadAbility" program within the center's Family Resource Library including early reading software for children with autism, the creation of a flier to promote the library to center parents, and other specialized reading materials for center families such as Braille books for children with vision impairment, DVDs with American Sign Language narration for children with hearing impairment, texture books for children who are blind or have sensory integration issues, and books and tapes featuring characters with disabilities  (Counties Served: Primarily Vanderburgh; also Gibson, Knox, Posey, Warrick)

Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp. - Cedar Hall Family Literacy Program

$6,282 for continued support of the "Literacy Links" project, encouraging early reading in the home and parent-child interaction (County Served: Vanderburgh)

Otwell Elementary School

$7,500 for continued support of the "Full Day Kindergarten Literacy Project," including family literacy events, guest author storytelling day, a field trip to a bookstore, and the implementation of the "Accelerated Reader" program and the "ABC Music and Me" program.  (County served: Pike)

Perry Central Community School Corporation

$6,751 for continued support of the "Reading Begins at Home" project that provides free books to disadvantaged families, offers family literacy events and book clubs to promote a love of reading, and strengthens partnerships with Perry County Even Start Program, Perry Central Family Outreach, Perry County Healthy Families Program, Stepping Stones Preschool, and other agencies in order to maintain and expand the program's reach (County served: Perry; specifically Perry Central School District)

The Potter's Wheel

$5,500 for the purchase of books and learning materials for Project ROAR (Reach Out and Read) that will serve at-risk children of parents who attend the Baby Basics class offered at the center (County served: Vanderburgh)

St. Vincent's Day Care Center

$5,800 to support the establishment of a Dialogic Reading Workshop program for teachers, children, and parents that will help advance the reading skills development of the children at the center (Counties Served: Primarily Vanderburgh; also Gibson, Posey, Warrick)

Tri-Cap (Dubois-Pike-Warrick, EOC)

$6,176 for continued support of the Head Start "Read to Succeed" project, including the purchase of books for the Emergent Readers program that encourages parent-child reading in the home, the purchase of books through Scholastic Book Club for children to build their home libraries, and the purchase of preschool to Kindergarten transition backpacks with school supplies, emergent reader book sets, and Kindergarten preparedness books for parents (Counties served: Pike, Warrick)

United Way of SW Indiana - Early Childhood Development Coalition

$9,300 to support the Literacy Party Program that brings information about the importance of early childhood literacy to the home in a fun, engaging, and informal manner (Counties Served: Spencer, Vanderburgh, and Warrick)

YMCA of Vincennes

$2,253 to support a new project entitled "Project Library" that will create a library of new, age-appropriate books at the YMCA Child Development Center for use by the YMCA teachers and for lending to center families (County Served: Knox)