The following is a mock grant application created for
LIB 204- Library Issues and Operations II
Title of Project: Ready Readers
Name of Funding Agency: Money for Value
Project Coordinator: Cherie Bronkar
Contact information:
Cherie Bronkar
Muskingum County Library System
220 N. 5th St.
Zanesville, OH 43701
(740) 453-0391
e-mail: bronkach@oplin.org
Library applying for grant:
Muskingum County Library system
220 N. 5th St.
Zanesville, OH 43701
Date: 11/30/04
Abstract
Applicants
General Description
Objectives
Activities and Steps to Achieve Objectives
Management Plan
Evaluation
Relation of Goals of Value for Money Granting Agency
Sustainability
Expenditures
Budget
We are requesting $40,824.00 for an early reading incentive program. This program will involve the library partnering with two other agencies. They are “Help Me Grow” and “Head Start”. The money that we are requesting will provide books to children that are disadvantaged for the first three years of their lives. These books will be age appropriate and will be delivered to the child once a month.
Muskingum County Library System
220 N. 5th St.
Zanesville, OH 43701
(740) 453-0391
Contact: Cherie Bronkar – Project Coordinator
Mission Statement:
To create an awareness of and provide quality, comprehensive, informational, cultural, educational and recreational resources to all spectrums of the community.
Partners:
Help Me Grow
333 Putnam Ave.
Zanesville, OH 43701
(740) 450-3275 Contact: Heather Rice
Head Start
1580 Adams Lane
Zanesville, OH 43701
(740) 454-6251 Contact: Joan Barr
Help Me Grow is a communication and public awareness initiative for wellness. The program combines Welcome Home, Early Start, and Early Intervention. The combined programs provide nurse visits to new parents, infant and toddler services for at risk children, and early detection services for possible developmental delays.
Help Me Grow will help us determine age appropriate titles for the children. They will determine eligibility and distribute the materials to the children when they make their monthly visits. Help Me Grow will also distribute library information on their visits.
Head Start provides non profit day cares funded through the Department of Job and Family Services. They provide education, health, nutrition and social services for preschoolers and their families.
Head Start will do an assessment of the children that were involved in the Ready Readers program to determine if those children were better prepared for preschool than children who were not involved in the program.
The Ready Readers program will serve children of low income families and children with disabilities. Help Me Grow will determine which children, in Muskingum County, will be eligible for the program. The percentage of families in Muskingum County below the poverty level is 11.8 %.
The specific need that we will be addressing is the need for children to be provided with age appropriate reading material so that they can be better prepared for preschool.
The purpose of our project is to help disadvantaged and disabled children by providing reading material that their families are unable to provide so that they can be prepared to enter preschool.
The intended outcome of our program will be that the children involved will be able to enter preschool with a well developed appreciation of reading and be better equipped to do well in preschool.
The Ready Readers program will be measured according to whether the children who have been involved with the program are better prepared for preschool.
We will partner with Head Start in order for them to track the progress of those in the Ready Readers program. We will ask them to assess whether these children are showing a learning advantage over the children who were not involved in our program and in this manner we will determine the success of the program.
Activities and Steps to Achieve Objectives
The first step that we will take is to get together with our contact at Help Me Grow and determine which book will be beneficial to the learning objectives of our program. Help Me Grow will determine which children they consider in the “At Risk” category. Once that is determined the library will order enough books to supply the Ready Readers program for three years. The library will insert book plates into all the books for the program. These plates will inform the patron that the books were purchased through the Ready Readers program. It will also list the partners involved, the library locations and mention to contact the library for story time dates and times.
Help Me Grow provides monthly nurse visits to “at risk” children. During their visit they will distribute the book for that month to the child. They will also include current story time information and library card signup information to the parents.
The library will attend Help Me Grow events and distribute information about library programs and services along with a short program on the importance of reading to your baby.
The library will meet with Help Me Grow on a monthly basis to get feedback from them on how the children and their parents are benefiting from the program.
When the first group of children is ready to enter preschool we will meet with Head Start so that we can provided them with names of the children who will be going into their program. They in turn will provide the Head Start teachers with the children’s names. We will ask that they track the progress of these children. We will gather the information from Head Start over their winter break. At which point all three partners will get together to go over the findings and determine the success of the project.
The library will provide a Project Coordinator. The Project Coordinator will oversee the steps needed to achieve the objectives of the program. The Project Coordinator will meet with the partners once the funding has been determined. The team will then move forward to the first step outlined in the previous pages. The Project coordinator will work together to take advantage of opportunities throughout the program to introduce library services to those involved in the program. The Project coordinator will oversee the budget and order the materials needed for the program. The Project Coordinator will make sure that the materials are delivered to Help Me Grow and that they distribute them according to the age guidelines. Help Me Grow will meet monthly with the Project Coordinator to advise on the progress of the program. The Project Coordinator will meet with Head Start to determine the criteria to be used to assess results measured in the preschoolers reading abilities. As the children enter preschool the coordinator will continue to meet with Head Start to be informed of the results from the program.
The personnel involved with the Project Coordinator, designees from the Help Me Grow program and designees from the Head Start Program. The Help Me Grow designees will consist of their advisor who has a degree in social work and child development and the nurses, with degrees in nursing, who will do the home visits. The Head Start designees will consist of their program advisor, with a Masters in Education and the teachers, with child development degrees, who will have students from our program. The library’s designee will be the Program Coordinator, who has experience providing and coordinating programs to encourage those who do not regularly visit the library to visit and take advantage of what the library offers.
The coordinator will meet with the partners as soon as funding has been decided. We will decide the titles to be ordered within one month. The titles will be ordered the following week. Once the library receives the titles ordered we will insert plates with the program name and partner’s contact information. The library will deliver the books to the Help Me Grow office with in two weeks after the materials are received. Help Me Grow will distribute the titles on a monthly basis to the children that are eligible. One year from the time the program has started the first children from our program will be entering the Head Start program. At this point we will have the Head Start teachers start to log the progress of the children in the Ready Readers program. We will meet with Head Start to discuss the progress of the children who were in the program on a bi-monthly basis. We will report our findings back to Money for Value on a quarterly basis. The full results of the success of our program will not be able to be determined until the children that started from birth enter preschool. This will require a 3 year timeline. As the first children turn 3, we will continue to update our findings to Money for Value for the next year.
The success of the Ready Readers program will be shown by determining if the children who received age appropriate reading material on a monthly basis for the first three years of their lives are better prepared to learn when they enter preschool.
This will be determined by the findings of the Head Start teachers. These teachers will track the progress of the Ready Readers children compared to the children who were not in the program. Head Start teachers will determine this by using the criteria by which they monitor the progress of their program.
Relation to Goals of Value for Money Granting Agency
The Ready Readers program is based on the need for reading material to be provided to children of low income families and children with disabilities.
Our community sees a need to provide literacy instruction at an early age so that at risk children are able to start preschool with an understanding of the importance of reading.
We will be partnering with two local agencies. Those agencies are Help Me Grow and Head Start.
This project will add value to our community by showing children the joy of reading at an early age in hopes that it will increase their ability to do better in school and give them an opportunity for a brighter future.
This project is based on the core library values of equity of access and service. These values will be served by providing materials that these children would not have had access to and providing service to the community by building literacy at an early age.
The Ready Readers project provides a unique solution to the problem of low literacy rates by starting to work with the parents of at risk children before they are born and by continuing our contact with these families for the first three critical years of the child’s development.
In an effort to sustain the Ready Readers program we will aggressively pursue new funding opportunities in advance of the need. Since the grant we are requesting would be spread out over a three year period, we will be able to start informing area groups of the success of the program and secure their help in advance for the next years. The groups that we will pursue are local business and groups such as Rotary, Knights of Columbus, and other local philanthropic associations.
We also have a back up plan to help lower the costs of the next years of the program. We will give the parents involved in the program an opportunity to give back to the program by returning any books that the children have moved on from, which are still in good condition. We can then reuse these items for the next group. This will not be a requirement, just an option available to the parents.
The only expenditures that we will have for the Ready Readers program are the books themselves. The fact that we are partnering with the other agencies means that we will not have to hire any outside consultants for the program.
Help Me Grow currently services 378 children per month. We will base our material expenditures on this number of children receiving one book a month for the next 3 years.
Each child will receive 36 books through the program. The average cost of the books selected for the program is $7.00 and after the library’s discount the cost will be $4.00.
So the average cost per child for three years will be $144.00.
There are currently 378 children that will be served through the program. So this amounts to 378 times $144.00. The total cost will be $54,432.00 for the 3 years of the program.
Category Total Local Grant
Library Materials
Books $54,432.00 13,608 40,824