September News for You: No More Lost Girls

The back-to-school brings anticipation of new possibilities and marks the start of LitWorld's Stand Up for Girls program. In honor of the International Day of the Girl on October 11th, we are working harder than ever to get every girl into a safe learning community where her own stories reign supreme. Read on to learn how you can join the Stand Up for Girls movement.

Right now there are at least 150 million girls who are not in school. Their unheard stories are a devastating loss for the whole world.

Stand Up for Girls right now:

1. Spread the word on social media. Share LitWorld's video and use these sample posts to tell your network why you'll Stand Up for Girls on October 11th.

2. Host an event for your friends, family, co-workers or students. Our free activity packet has everything you need to get started.

3. Show your support by using the Stand Up for Girls logo as your profile picture on social media or posting a photo with the Stand Up for Girls sign along with a personal story.

4. Launch a fundraiser on behalf of LitWorld using CrowdRise or make a donation today. We are ready to bring our programs to thousands more girls around the world but we need your help.

Our Hope for the World's Girls

It is our mission to empower girls around the world to author lives of independence, hope and joy. We are watching this happen every day through updates from our regional coordinators around the world and right here in New York. 

This is a momentous back-to-school season as the girls from our first LitClub are now college freshmen! We had the privilege of escorting some of our members to their new campuses. We are so proud of this intrepid group and we cannot wait to watch the girls become literacy leaders in their new communities.

Handwriting is NOT a Lost Art

This back-to-school season we are advocating for the power of a diverse writing life. All LitWorld programs, including those that feature technology, highlight the power of putting pen to paper.

In an op-ed published by the Miami Herald, LitWorld's Founder Pam Allyn writes: "Beyond all the educational reasons for why handwriting still matters in this, the 21st century, is the fact that one's own unique style is a fingerprint, a mark upon the world that belongs to that child, and no one else." Click here to read the full piece. 

Join the Stand Up for Girls Photo Campaign

Click on the picture to download your own copy of the Stand Up for Girls logo!

We want to cover social media with Stand Up for Girls photos and stories. Change your profile picture on social media to the Stand Up for Girls logo - click here to download the logo.

You can also choose to take a picture holding the Stand Up for Girls sign and share it on your social networking sites. This photo will have the most impact if you pair it with a personal story that explains why you are standing up for girls on October 11th, the Day of the Girl.

Your story can be about a woman who has deeply inspired your life, your hope or dream for every girl in the world, or about a specific issue related to gender equality that resonates with you. For bonus points, make a video of yourself holding the sign and telling your story!

Tip: Be sure to include #standup4girls at the end of your post and tag specific friends in your post to personally invite them into the Stand Up for Girls movement and to let them know that you are listening for their story.

Click here to download the Stand Up for Girls sign and read the sample posts below for inspiration:

I will Stand Up for Girls with LitWorld on October 11th. I am standing up because around the world 150 million girls are not in school. I want to know their stories. I want their ideas to change our world. Please take a stand with me. Visit litworld.org/standupforgirls to download your own sign and tell me your #standup4girls story!

Stand up for girls! I invite you to advocate with me for girls everywhere, and the power they should each have to live their fullest dreams. This power comes from literacy, a powerful tool that breaks the heartbreaking barriers of poverty and liberates girls to live in freedom. Join with me on October 11 to #standup4girls with LitWorld, on Facebook, on Twitter, and everywhere.

My life has been inspired by the stories of many powerful and inspiring women and girls, so I will #standup4girls on the October 11th Day of the Girl. This year I'm standing up in honor of my aunt who is a breast cancer survivor, a lover of all living creatures and one of the few people who can make me laugh until my cheeks hurt. I don't know where I would be without her stories, her fearlessness, her guidance, her love. Won't you #standup4girls with me? http://litworld.org/standupforgirls

International Literacy Day 2014: Why We Read

In honor of International Literacy Day 2014 we've teamed up with one of our amazing World Read Aloud Day partners, International Book Bank, to tell the world why we read. Here's what members of the LitWorld and LitLife teams had to say. Share your own story on social media today with the hashtag #whyiread!

5 Things You Need to Know About the Power of Literacy

If it were up to us, the benefits of reading and writing would be mentioned and celebrated on every broadcast of morning and evening news: "It's 11 o'clock, have you read to your children today?" Here are 5 powerful facts about literacy.

1. Reading aloud is vital.

Research proves that reading aloud to children every day puts them almost a year ahead of children who do not receive daily read alouds and that is regardless of parents' income, academic or cultural background. On top of that, pediatricians are now prescribing read alouds alongside their nutrition and health advice in recognition of the proven benefits on brain development and vocabulary acquisition.

2. Literacy saves lives.

According to UNESCO, improvements in women’s education explained half of the reduction in child deaths in the past twenty years. Mothers who are educated are more likely to have their children vaccinated, and more likely to send them to school. Imagine what will happen when every child and adult can read, write and learn all they want and need to know.

3. Literacy teaches you to own and value your own story.

The Education for All Global Monitoring report states that there is a clear link between literacy and a positive self image. Building confidence as a reader, writer, listener and speaker is transformational in a person's life. These core abilities are used every minute of every day to read the world. More than that, reading stories gives a greater understanding of self. Suddenly there are characters who feel the same feelings as you, who share your struggles, your hopes and your dreams. Literacy brings us out of isolation and into a community of readers and writers.  

4. Literacy gets you to the goal.

Studies have shown that people who write down their goals are 80% more likely to achieve them. Having documentation of our goals and reading them back to ourselves on a regular basis keeps our motivation at the forefront of our minds and allows us to start to create action plans. This is productive literacy in action. Simply having the ability to write down what you want to do and where you want to go leads to an impressive head-start.

5. Literacy empowers.

The ability to seek out and understand information gives us all independence to make choices, to advocate for ourselves and to learn about our community and world. People who can read and write are powerful in society and studies show that literacy leads to greater self-reliance and civic engagement.

5 Ways to Build Back to School Excitement

As September gets closer and closer that special feeling of returning to school never fails to wash over us. This time of year brings back such fond and visceral memories. The smell of fresh autumn air, the energized, electric feeling that buzzed through campus and the feeling of unlimited possibilities awaiting us in the year ahead. Here are 5 ways to get your children excited to go back to school.

1. Share your own favorite back to school memories.

Bring your child closer to your history by sharing what made you the most excited about going back to school when you were your child's age. Think about your favorite teacher, a book that you studied that changed your world (or your mind) or something cool that you learned in science class. It be fun for your child to think about walking in your footsteps, and she will be eager to tell you about her own experience and to reflect on how classrooms are the same or different than when you were in school.

2. Delight in new responsibilities.

Responsibility is hugely exciting for children who are constantly looking up to older students, siblings and dreaming of the day that they will finally be "grown up" enough to do all the things their role models can do. Talk about the unique experience of a second grader (or third grader, or fifth...) with you child. "You're becoming a leader at your school. This year you can be a younger student's reading buddy!" "I can't wait to come and watch the fifth grade muscial." Reach out to your child's teacher if you need specific examples, and pair academic growth with new responsibilities at home for extra excitement.

3. Read aloud back-to-school themed books.

Use your daily read aloud to share books about other children's (or animal's) experience at school. This will ease any anxiety or nervousness your child feels about returning to school when he sees that the characters he loves and admires share his feelings. Some LitWorld favorites include "Chrysanthemum" by Kevin Henkes and "Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes" by Eric Litwin. For older children try "Wonder" by R.J. Palacio and of course, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Ask your local librarian or bookstore owner for more suggestions!

4. Dear Future Self...

Ask your child to write down his dream for this school year. What does he hope to learn in class? How does he want his friends and teachers to describe him? What new clubs or teams will he join (or start)? Have him take these big goals and write a letter to his future self to be opened on the last day of the school year. This is great for personal goal setting, self-motivation and creating a positive, hopeful vision for the year ahead.

5. Go back prepared and ready to rock.

Reach out to your child's teacher to ask for some general details on this year's big learning goals, lessons and units. Give your child teasers about this information. "I heard that you're going to write an online blog about your favorite animal this year!" Take time to write a short book review or to learn a new fact that your child can share with his friends and teachers at school.

August News for You: The Ceremonies of Summer

This edition of our monthly newsletter is dedicated to everyone who feels that thump in your heart at the thought of summer. The thump that comes from the memory of a sun-soaked reading immersion, those literary adventures that took you away from the daily ordinary world, and the feeling you had while drifting into your books that the days were long and could last forever. We gave a lot of kids those "lit feelings" this summer in our LitCamps. Take a look.

Campers & Counselors Tell the Story of LitCamp Best

LitCampers use iPads and creative storytelling apps to tell their own stories.

Our Harlem LitCamp has wrapped up for another year, leaving a positive, permanent impact on all who experienced the magic in action. The growth of our campers as readers over the course of LitCamp was dramatic. Daily read alouds, active play and creative writing activities have made them strong and ready for the school year ahead. We also saw how much the traditions and ceremonies of LitCamp matter to the children, their teen counselors and our LitCamp interns. The younger LitCampers know exactly how many years it will be until they are old enough to take on the coveted role of teen counselor. The children created a weekly newsletter to share their special LitCamp culture. Click here to read camper interviews, poems, jokes and more!

Our LitCamp and Research & Development summer interns have also been blogging about their LitWorld experiences. Their reflections illuminate the soul of LitWorld. Isabelle wrote: "We cannot ring out every drop in every moment of life without breaking open its piñata and dancing in the shower of candy. At LitWorld, these tiny fiestas are constant, and it is through these celebrations of the big and small - the funny faces, the misunderstood song lyrics, the inexplicable inside jokes - that we realize the true gifts we have and the strengths we can share together."  
Click to read a beautiful post from each of our wonderful interns.

LitWorld Haiti Keeps the LitCamp Summer Going

LitCamp inspires fearless writing and reading in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

A month-long LitCamp is underway at the LitWorld Innovation Hub in Port-au-Prince Haiti! The camp is bringing our inter-generational LitWorld family together. While the children read aloud, write creative stories, sing and play, our Moms Sewing LitClub is measuring and making school uniforms for the children (and joining in the fun too, of course). 

At the end of the month our team will join our partners The Children of Haiti Project and the TOYA Foundation in Haiti to lead training and professional development workshops with 20 young women leaders who will be growing our programs on-the-ground to serve even more children and families this year. We will also be co-running an intensive week-long LitCamp with our young women leaders to reach even more LitClub girls and boys. Our visit to the field will end with a community-wide LitFest celebration to share the powerful stories and extraordinary work that our LitCampers, leaders and Moms Sewing LitClub have been creating all summer long.

Stand Up for Girls with LitWorld on October 11th

Stand up for the girls who inspire you on October 11th, the Day of the Girl.

LitWorld's Stand Up for Girls program in honor of the October 11th Day of the Girl calls on people everywhere to celebrate the power of girls' own stories. Our programs have proven that giving girls access to transformational literacy, opportunities for creative expression and the support of peers and mentors leads to empowered girls who create social transformation in their communities. And yet two thirds of the world's illiterate people are women and girls.

Your voice matters. Use our Stand Up for Girls event kit and sample social media posts to spread the Stand Up for Girls movement in your community. For more on the urgent issue of girls' education read and share Pam Allyn's latest Huffington Post blog: "Where Are the Stories of Girls." 

5 Ways to Set (and Achieve) Big Reading Goals

This summer kids across the country have united to set a reading world record. They have been logging all of their minutes read through the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. If you've been following along then you've heard the glorious news: our nation's children have surpassed 220 million minutes read! This smashes the record set in 2013 and more importantly will permanently boost each participants' confidence, stamina and identity as a reader. In less than a month kids will head back to school. Let's use this amazing excitement and love for reading that has been nurtured over the summer as incentive for year-long literacy growth. Here are 5 tips for setting and achieving big reading goals this back-to-school season.

1. Let children own their reading goals.

Introduce your child to joyful goal-setting by giving him control over his reading life. Cultivating a healthy habit of challenging himself to see what he is capable of can and should start from an early age. Allowing him to set his own terms will make him accountable for his goals and it will also ensure that his goals are in line with who he is as a reader. Does he want to read 5 non-fiction books in 2 months? Does he want to read for 11 minutes after dinner each night? Does he want to read aloud to his pet hamster every morning? Support him in his mission to name goals that will present a joyful challenge.

2. Bring a buddy on board.

Doing anything with a friend is more fun, and having a buddy on board provides healthy competition and companionship. Your child will be more likely to dig deep and build reading muscles if he has someone to compare notes and progress with on a regular basis. Allowing your child and her friends to connect as readers will add a new dimension to the friendship. Discussing books and strategies for reading (where is the best place to read? why are some books harder to connect with than others?) brings new value to the act of reading.
 
3. Celebrate the milestones.

Decide with your child how you will track his progress towards each reading goal. Make a tracking chart or a sticker or badge system (for example, a sticker for every half hour read, five stickers equals a special badge) and display this chart in a special place in your home. Breaking up bigger goals into smaller milestones allows you to celebrate each extraordinary step your child takes and it also breaks the goal into smaller, achievable steps.

4. Remember that minutes matter.

For all readers, and struggling readers especially, make it clear that becoming a strong reader is not about finishing a book. Each precious minute that your child reads matters. Regardless of whether or not your child has reached a mini-milestone, affirm his hard work after every effort that he devotes to his reading goals. Make his growth evident to him by letting him know when he reads for even one minute longer than the day before. Gradual changes can be hard for children to notice as they are happening, having you as a coach and champion goes a long way.

5. Mix it up.

Keep your child engaged in reading goals by adding variation to your "mini challenges." Make sure to vary the time period for each (make month or longer goals, but also make week-long goals) and create themed challenges around the seasons or special events and occasions. Your child may decide to read only animal-themed books in October or poetry books in April. Another idea is to pair reading with an action. For a running and reading challenge your child could decide to run for as many minutes as he is able to read.