Since its beginning in 2009, storytime village has worked to help the youngest in our communities thrive through partnerships that provide early childhood development, family engagement around…

Since its beginning in 2009, storytime village has worked to help the youngest in our communities thrive through partnerships that provide early childhood development, family engagement around reading, and access to books. In 2014, the organization focused its efforts on the literacy GAP that is so vital to the state's economic sustainability. While the nation's reading proficiency rates have improved for most demographic groups over the last decade, large disparities still exist by race and income status. Kansas is among states where the literacy GAP widened. The literacy champions program will be the americorp vista project. This project developed from storytime village's first-year vista project and is a community-based anti-poverty program that builds organizational capacity. Literacy champions is a peer mentoring program that builds partnerships with teachers, parents, and community volunteers to provide title i, third-grade struggling readers the support they need to read at grade level. The program provides weekly reading mentoring sessions that help the participating third-grade students grow their reading skills and builds text-rich environments at home by providing take-home books and other literacy resources. According to a recent annie e. Casey foundation kids count report, 83 percent of kansas african american fourth-graders are below proficient in reading. In wichita, only half of african american fourth-graders are reading at grade level. This disturbing statistic is foretelling for those children that only 30 percent of them will have a chance of being proficient in reading by graduation. They will also be four times less likely to graduate from high school. Those in poverty will be 13 times less likely to graduate. Early literacy is proven to be a critical building block for children to find their way out of poverty. That is why we are requesting vista members to help our organization with capacity-building activities that will help US better serve the community through anti-poverty programming. Our goal is that through the support of vista members storytime village will be sustainable once the vista members leave the organization.