Welcome to Share Literacy

Share Literacy Chapters are administered by volunteers.
100% of your contribution gives books to needy children, Donate Here.

Mission and goals:
Our mission is to address and reduce the growing literacy gap between rich privileged and poor at risk children and their families. Share Literacy promotes the development of reading and thinking skills by partnering with established early childhood education agencies serving poverty-level and low-income families, with after-school programs and with organizations providing ESL and adult literacy instruction.

Program goals:

Improve literacy skills
Encourage the development of higher-level thinking skills
Ensure that every child participating in a Share Literacy program takes home at least one book to keep
Improve parental knowledge and involvement in the development of their children's literacy
Promote tolerance and understanding by using multicultural literature designed to teach problem-solving and commonality of human experience
Improve teachers' instructional skills in the areas of early literacy and literacy training

Programs: 'Teaching-Stories: Learning that Lasts'

We provide a complete curriculum: lesson plans, activity guides with quality books and audio recordings of them (English or bilingual Spanish-English) that children can take home and keep, along with activities to engage parents and foster a home-school connection.
Our professional development program offers hands-on opportunities using our lesson plans, activity guides, and other educational aids.
Teachers and other professionals learn how to improve students' reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking skills while utilizing best-practice educational strategies.
Workshops permit time for collegial discussion and for sharing professional successes and frustrations helping teachers to increase their expectations and reinvigorate their commitment.

Over the past seven years, with the help of grants from several foundations and many individual donors, Share Literacy has served more than 150,000 disadvantaged children in the U.S. We provide books and training materials, plus professional development services at cost. We rely on donations and grants to cover these costs to enable us to continue our services and expand.

News

Hoopoe Books, Schools and Community Police Officers and Firefighters Connect with Kids in Bay Area

Thanks to a 4th annual grant from the Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit Program, and the Wells Fargo Foundation, as well as donations from other Share supporters and a matching grant of $70,000 this year from the Will J. Reid Foundation, our goal this year is to donate 30,000 books and ancillary teacher supplies to at-risk children in Northern California. We have started to do so by providing materials to several San Francisco Bay Area schools and programs this Spring. Many of these programs held special read-along events with local police and firefighters. Here are some highlights.

IHSD (Institute for Human and Social Development) South San Francisco, CA: IHSD received books to give out to all 750 children in their Head Start programs and their teachers received books, CDs and teaching guides. IHSD scheduled a special Literacy Day at one of the schools in East Palo Alto where officers from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office and community firefighters conducted a read-along from The Clever Boy and the Terrible, Dangerous Animal and connected the story to safety for the kids. To read a letter from Mary Joy Duenas, the Special Projects Coordinator at ISHD, click here (325 KB pdf).

Students from East Palo Alto CDC and officer Andrea Dion from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office (CA) read The Clever Boy and the Terrible, Dangerous Animal by Idries Shah.

Preschoolers Become Readers of Hoopoe Stories in Fremont, CA: Share donated books and teacher materials to Fremont Unified School District Preschools. For an article on a special read-along event with police officers, click here (112 KB pdf).

Glankler School (Fremont CA) child development teacher reads The Clever Boy and the Terrible, Dangerous Animal to students…and students and teachers responded with drawings and notes.

Noriega CDC Read-Along with Firefighters in San Francisco, CA: Noriega Child Development Center received The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water home literacy kits and teacher materials in June, and scheduled a special read-along with San Francisco officers and firefighters. To read a local article on the visit, click here (1.6 MB pdf).

San Francisco firefighter Miles Young reads to kids

San Francisco firefighter Miles Young reads to Noriega CDC students from
Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water at a special June 12 event, and a student
gives him a hug of appreciation.

East Palo Alto Kids Foundation Receives Books
from Hoopoe-Share

East Palo Alto, CA: Share donated Hoopoe books, including Dende Maro: The Golden Prince by Sally Mallam, to the EPAK (East Palo Alto Kids Foundation). The Dende Maro books were used in a bookcase project for Costano School’s graduating second graders, where EPAK furnished each student with a beautiful bookcase stocked with books. Share Literacy also donated more Dende Maros to the East Palo schools for use in their art classes and libraries. To read an article from the local journal The Almanac on the special bookcase event, click here (20 KB pdf). For an article from the Palo Alto Daily on a reading from Dende Maro by author Sally Mallam at the Costano School event, click here (1.7 MB pdf).

Alum Rock School District Receives over 7300
Hoopoe Books

San Jose, CA: This Spring, the Alum Rock School District received over 7,300 books for their students in Grades K-3 and ancillary materials for their teachers. Alum Rock has sent Hoopoe-Share Literacy an enormous stack of drawings and notes from the students and teachers.

To read a few more examples of these, click here (904 KB pdf).

Massachusetts Programs Receive Hoopoe Books

“…reading is fun and you learn new things and also you
actually feel like reading over and over again…”
—2nd Grader, Prospect Hill Academy (Somerville, MA).

Boston, MA: Thanks to Share donors and the efforts of volunteers, schools and youth programs in the Boston area received gifts of books for students this Spring. Karin Kugel, Librarian of the Prospect Hill Academy, sent a packet of student compositions on Fatima the Spinner and The Boy Without a Name by Idries Shah. The students wrote about having special dreams and patience and about learning new words and having fun with reading. As a second grader wrote: “…I think the golden rule of the story [Fatima the Spinner and the Tent] is never give up your hopes and if something bad happens something good will come out of it.”

"I finished the book [The Boy Without a Name] on Tuesday. We read it all last week. The kids loved it!!! We wrote down the meanings for all the vocab. words and performed the play on the last day of the reading. Also, the students took the books home to discuss it with their parents. They taught their parents all the new words they now know." —Briannce Ruggerio, 2nd Grade Teacher at Prospect Hill Academy.

Share Literacy receives a fourth grant from Kaiser Permanente to support Northern California programs

Our very grateful thanks to Kaiser Permanente Community Grants Program for their fourth year of support and for their very generous grant in December 2008 of $90,000.00 to help us provide books and Home Literacy Kits to children and their families in Northern California and provide professional development training for their teachers.

This new grant arrived in time to enable us to donate books to more than 10,000 underserved Bay Area children for the 2008 holiday season!

	Share volunteer Mimi Sommers wraps holiday gifts for homeless children during the 2008 Holiday Give-Away program, supported by a grant from Kaiser Permanente Community Grants Program.
	East Palo Alto (CA) student sorting gift books for the 2008 Holiday Give-Away program. The East Palo Alto Kids Foundation (EPAK) helped to distribute these books to over 250 school children.

Article on Kaiser Permanente Grant in December 2008 (1.5 MB pdf).
Article on Kaiser Permanente Grant and programs (268 KB pdf).

Share Literacy Volunteer Chapter News!

To join a volunteer Share Literacy Chapter in your area,
or to start one of your own click here.

Right, Share Literacy volunteer, Dan Sperling, talking to a shopper looking for alternative gifts at the Takoma Park, MD, Alternative Gift Fair put on by www.aggw.org. Click here for Share Literacy Alternative Gifts.

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A letter from a Library Media Teacher in the Juvenile Court Schools:

Recently a guest reader shared the story, The Old Woman and The Eagle with a group of incarcerated students. Some had never heard a story read aloud, and most had never commented on what had been heard. Both “firsts” occurred with this story and what a extraordinary event in our court school library to hear at-risk learners brimming with enthusiasm and rich comments about a story from the other side of the world. The Old Woman and The Eagle resonated deeply with their own lives and speaking up with their thoughtful reflections allowed each of them to stand tall and touch that magic of human dignity that is deserved by all. A heartfelt thanks for bringing such depth to juvenile hall!

Jane Guttman
Library Media Teacher
Juvenile Court Schools
Central Juvenile Hall
San Berdardino CA

Since its beginning in 2000, Hoopoe Share Literacy has partnered with established literacy programs to provide books to more than 200,000 children in the US. See partner program for more information.

Jessica Nájera, playing the part of the butterfly in The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water, tells Share the Lion, played by Walter Requeno, that the scary face in the water is his own reflection.
—Photo courtesy El Tiempo Latino taken at Rosemount Center, Washington, DC.

The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water teaches the children higher-level vocabulary. Rosemount Center uses the book to teach children to read and recognize words in both English and Spanish.
—Photo courtesy The Afro-American Newspaper

Rev 30nov09

Welcome to Share Literacy

Share Literacy Chapters are administered by volunteers. 100% of your contribution gives books to needy children, Donate Here.