The Staten Island Foundation Summer Literacy Enhancement Program

The Staten Island Foundation is pleased to announce the second year of the Summer Literacy Enhancement Program. Grants of up to $5,000 will be available for eligible organizations in support of literacy activities that will enhance summer programming for Staten Island youth in 2008.

The Foundation has a strong emphasis on support for education, in all of its many forms, throughout the Staten Island community. Last year, The Foundation launched this program to support literacy activities that enhanced summer programs in an effort to address the “summer literacy gap”. Research showed, that students tend to score lower on tests of achievement, especially in math and reading, at the end of the summer than they did on the same tests before the summer break. The Staten Island Foundation also hoped to encourage children to learn to love reading and use it as a tool for life-long personal growth.

Results of the projects that were funded in 2007, confirmed that a child's intellectual development does not have to take a break in the summer. Grantees integrated literacy, while still having “fun”, by tapping into the different ways children learn including art, music, dance, drama, storytelling, educational games, science experiments, as well as, writing, cooking, gardening, field trips, group reading, and more. The Foundation designed The Summer Literacy Enhancement Program to support these enhancements, in addition to, traditional remedial literacy programs.

During 2007, The Staten Island Foundation also adopted an outcomes framework and grantees of the 2007 Summer Literacy Project were able to demonstrate measurable results, even though the activities were relatively small in scope and duration. This year, we will again ask applicants to tell us about the results they hope to achieve by enhancing literacy programs. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of this program, grant recipients will be asked to submit verification forms at the completion of their summer program.

The deadline to submit applications is Friday, May 16, 2008.

If you have any questions about The Staten Island Foundation Summer Literacy Enhancement Program, please contact our Program Officer Laura Jean Watters at 718-697-2831 or watters@thestatenislandfoundation.org. We look forward to working with you to improve summertime learning on Staten Island.