The little charity that could
by Jill Hilderman
If you’re a small nonprofit and you want to influence and work with big systems, encourage partnerships and collaborate around reading across the life span of young children — you need to be innovative.
Such is the endeavour for Calgary Reads. The early-literacy initiative has been helping children learn to read with confidence and joy for more than 15 years.
Building on current success
Calgary Reads has effective long-time partnerships within the education system. Its activities in schools include one-on-one tutoring for struggling readers in grade one and two; read-aloud sessions with kindergarten children to increase their exposure to language, stories and books; and reading celebrations that bring schools, community and businesses together.
The organization is also involved in the human services sector through participation in the First 2000 Days Network, acting as part of the ‘Backbone’ and as fiscal sponsor. The purpose of the Network is to increase the coordination and collaboration between those involved with Early Childhood Development in order to ensure that children aged from birth to age five meet their optimal development before they start school.
Recognizing the need
Despite its role in schools, Calgary Reads recognized the need to help children develop critical early-language and literacy skills from a younger age. Nearly 30 percent of children in Calgary enter kindergarten with language skills significantly below grade level, and these learning deficits can persist throughout school and life.
Calgary Reads took inspiration from Reach Out and Read, an American nonprofit that serves 4.2 million children annually by training doctors to promote the importance of reading to parents of young children.
“We were attracted to this evidence-based model because we wanted to move upstream in our interventions,” says Steacy Collyer, Executive Director of Calgary Reads. “But, we are a tiny nonprofit and we knew that to work in the healthcare system it would take time to build relationships, explore the degree to which reading is valued, and see if new partnerships were possible.”
Calgary Reads engaged with its peers through First 2000 Days — and explored opportunities to collaborate within the healthcare system. It took time and persistence to identify potential partners to help launch a pilot. Calgary Reads wanted to influence the first 1,000 days, or three years, of a child’s life — a critical time for brain development and when more than 80 percent of the brain is formed.
Calgary Reads elected to focus on family physicians because they are typically viewed by patients as a trusted voice. Doctors and nurses are ideally positioned to advise new parents about the importance of reading to their newborns and young children. During clinic visits they could provide information, encouragement and give a suitable book to families.
Innovation in action
Calgary Reads prototyped Read to Me — a program that emphasizes the importance of reading aloud every day to babies and young children, from birth onward.
Literacy training and resources were provided to support six medical sites in Calgary including a maternity clinic and primary care networks. Eighty doctors and nurses were involved together with other nonprofit and community partners.
The program was designed to enhance values around reading; build the capacity of parents and caregivers to help their children build early language and literacy skills; and increase book access — as many children in Calgary live in homes without print materials.
Doctors were provided with a reading prescription pad to help them ‘formalize’ the recommendation to parents to read aloud daily to their child. They gave families information and an age-appropriate, language-rich children’s book called Read to Me, by Barbara Reid.
Understandably, it is challenging for the healthcare system to innovate quickly and secure funding for new initiatives. So several nimble and adaptive nonprofits and community members leveraged their resources to provide support. Other financial help came from foundations and private donors.
Doctors shared feedback that patients were not always confident reading in English. So Calgary Reads innovated again by translating the book into 10 languages and found a way to create a dual language book. The doctor or nurse could then add an appropriate translated language sticker onto each page. This enabled the parent to read the book aloud to their child in their first language — and see the English language words too.
The story continues
The project confirmed there is a need and appetite among parents to receive support and encouragement around their children’s literacy development. While doctors and nurses are in a unique position to provide this service, and are amenable to it, they do face time and scheduling pressures.
With hopes to scale the initiative, Calgary Reads is crafting a continuum of professionals to include healthcare practitioners, librarians and principals to reinforce the reading message from multiple voices. Potentially, subsequent age-appropriate books will be available from libraries and schools as part of the program. And small community-based coalitions that are part of the First 2000 Days Network will provide funding for more books to continue to test the program in new sites.
“We recognize the establishment of long-term, sustainable relationships and literacy champions is ongoing and will require a rethink of how the health and education sectors can work together in Alberta,” says Steacy.
For now, the Calgary Reads team is enthusiastic about future possibilities. They will develop a video to complement the healthcare professionals’ advice to families, continue to support the knowledge of nurses and doctors regarding reading and self-regulation and continue to creatively expand their book access initiatives.
Visit calgaryreads.com to learn more.
