Pam Allyn on the Importance of Reading and Dreaming Big

LitWorld Founder and Global Ambassador for Scholastic's Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life. campaign, Pam Allyn, shares why reading helps children live a better life. This video underlines the importance of access, choice, involvement and reading practice, and provides insight on how Scholastic Book Fairs can help families and schools raise readers.

"The most meaningful gift that we as parents, and as educators, can share with children is our own involvement." -- Pam Allyn, Executive Director of LitWorld

For more information on Scholastic's Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life. campaign visit: http://www.scholastic.com/readeveryday/index.htm.

Double Your Impact Through Our Pearson Foundation Matching Grant

LitWorld has been selected by the Pearson Foundation as the recipient of a $250,000 matching grant! The Pearson Foundation identifies major changemakers who are creating solutions for the educational disadvantages young people face around the world. 

LitWorld is totally unique, creating literacy sanctuaries of hope, strength and joy for all children in all circumstances. Literacy is a most crucial, powerful tool that people use to realize the life they want to live. They get to make their own choices. Tell their own stories. Map their own futures.

 If we can raise $250,000 by December 31, 2012, the Pearson Foundation will match these contributions dollar for dollar.  

Here is what can happen if we can meet this goal. One child becomes a reader. Two children read together. More children join a LitClub. Many more children participate in LitCamps. The community transforms itself with the power of stories.

Our gratitude is immense for the moment we are in. The time is urgent, and the time is now. Let’s pay the joy forward. Make a gift before the end of 2012 and double the impact of your donation.

Pam Allyn's New Book Published - Be Core Ready: Powerful, Effective Steps to Implementing and Achieving the Common Core State Standards

Pam is an authority on the Common Core State Standards, and a leading voice championing equity in education for all children. In this book she advocates for the standards as a new Bill of Rights for all children, leveling the playing field, and raising expectations.

Her message in this book is that the power in education comes from the core. Not only the Common Core State Standards, but the core within each of us that carries the power of stories, and words to truly change the world.

Learn more here. 

Partnership with A Thread of Blue

LitWorld is excited to announce our partnership with A Thread of Blue, a stationary company with a big heart! A Thread of Blue was founded by LitWorld friends Rachel Albert and Debbie Rosmarin to recognize rites of passage, and is named for the Jewish tradition of sewing blue threads into the Jewish prayer shawl. These blue threads symbolize equality.

Rachel and Debbie reached out to us with a most generous offer, to donate 20% of the sale of any cards from their site to LitWorld! We were thrilled, but we didn't stop there. Rachel and Debbie then asked if we might like to create a set of LitWorld notecards! We are honored to be working with A Thread of Blue and present to you the first publicly available line of LitWorld stationary, featuring images from our LitClubs around the world. Click here to check them out.

If you use the code: LTW12 when you place your order for LitWorld notecards, or any other notecards from A Thread of Blue, 20% of the proceeds will go to LitWorld!

We know you will love these cards as much as we do, and thank you for supporting LitWorld in partnership with A Thread of Blue.

Visit: http://athreadofblue.ipower.com/store/litworld.html

At checkout, enter code LTW12 to allocate 20% of the proceeds to LitWorld.

Pam's Latest Huff Post Blog - The Best Defense Against Bullying: Arming Your Kids With Stories

 

Pam's latest Huff Post blog tackles an issue that every parent and child must confront in some capacity, bullying. Read the full piece on the Huffington Post. 

"Reading builds resilience and empathy. The act of reading brings the gifts of stories that have the power to change a child's perception, help a child deal with uncomfortable situations, and model different options for being strong in the world.

Childhood can be a profoundly lonely experience. Whether it's walking to school wishing for a friend, or sitting by oneself on the bus or dreading the endless minutes in the cafeteria, our children need fortification. Sometimes their own feelings of shame and confusion lead them to want to dominate others."
 

LitWorld Receives Special Matching Grant from the Pearson Foundation

LitWorld has been selected by the Pearson Foundation as the recipient of a very special matching grant award. The Pearson Foundation identifies major changemakers who are creating solutions for the educational disadvantages young people face around the world. This award is an enormous honor for us, in celebration of what LitWorld has accomplished so far, and in honor of faith in our future.

Here is the grand challenge the Pearson Foundation has made to us right now: If we can raise $250,000 by December 31, 2012, the Pearson Foundation will match these contributions dollar for dollar, to raise a total of $500,000 by year's end.

If we meet this challenge, we can launch fifty new LitClubs and LitCamps in Harlem, in Kibera, in Kisumu, in Kumasi, in Manila, in Port au Prince, in the communities that reach out to us every day because they are inspired by LitWorld's unique approach to education and they want to join the movement.

There are close to a billion people in the world who cannot read. Two thirds of them are girls. The time is urgent for us to change this. Help us make this happen, click here to make a contribution today.

The First Ever International Day of the Girl is Here!

Today we Stand Up for all the girls in the world who hunger for an education. Education is a fundamental human right in democratic society. The girls who drop out of school, who disappear from active society due to early marriage, prostitution, and poverty are also girls who, grown to womanhood, could be forces for change. That is what we want to see in this world. Let us not lose them. No more lost girls.

Stand Up for girls, not just today but every day.