Featured Story

from Shelf Life, February 2006
Ready to Learn Providence and AmeriCorps workers bring library programs into community

“Talk with parenting experts, make new friends, play together; discover new books, songs and rhymes to share; and help your child grow up to be a healthy, happy reader!”

This is the welcoming message of the Library’s popular Cradle to Crayons program, which shows parents and caregivers of children ages 1-3 how to help their children develop early literacy skills which will lead to kindergarten readiness.

Over the past three years, the Library has received welcome support for this program by collaborating with Ready to Learn Providence (R2LP), under the direction of Joyce Butler. R2LP has enabled the Library to expand and enhance the program, while the Library has provided another way for R2LP to fulfill its mission of helping all children in Providence enter school healthy and ready to learn.

The Library’s latest exciting collaboration with R2LP is their new AmeriCorps grant. This three-year program has placed an Early Literacy Outreach Aide at each of the Library’s ten branches to assist and further develop the Cradle to Crayons program, to reach out to center-based and family child care providers, and to help with other library programs and activities.

AmeriCorps is a federally funded national program, similar to the PeaceCorps, but members serve locally. In their own words, the program, “connects more than 70,000 Americans each year in intensive service to meet our country’s critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment.” Members receive a small stipend and are encouraged to live in the communities where they serve. At the end of their service, participants will not only walk away with a wealth of skills and experience, they will have earned a $4,725 educational award for use toward a degree or the repayment of their student loans.

Our AmeriCorps members began their year of service August 1, 2005 and will work through June 30, 2006. For their entire first month, this ambitious and diverse group of men and women underwent extensive training at R2LP. Now the team meets weekly to share ideas, receive professional development (even acquiring education credits through URI if they are so inclined), ask questions, and support each other. The 10 Library AmeriCorps members are supervised and supported by the Library’s own Paola Harris, who began her career here in a similar capacity as a VISTA volunteer, reaching out to Providence’s Spanish-speaking community.

So far, members have created new lessons, presented story-times out in the community, and chosen new books and activities. Each member has also targeted 10 agencies in their service area for outreach and program promotion. New families have been brought into the Cradle to Crayons program and the Library, young children have received library services out in the community, and many more families and caregivers have heard the message about helping children enter school healthy and ready to learn. Such community outreach is invaluable and had enabled the Library to expand and refine the way it delivers service to the community.

For more information on Ready to Learn Providence and how to get involved, visit their website: www.r2lp.org.

Portrait of an AmeriCorps Member
Chontell Nelson Washington
A Rhode Island native, Howard University graduate, Minister, five-time winner of the Martin Luther King Scholarship, and a mother of two with an impressive history of community service, Chontell Nelson Washington is also an AmeriCorps Early Literacy Outreach Aid. Growing up, she spent a good deal of time after school at the Knight Memorial Library and has always wanted to work at the Library. She has worked for Lifespan, the Urban League, and Dorcas Place, to name just a few of her community-oriented jobs. Now, she is responsible for outreach, data management, and the development of the Cradle to Crayons program at our Central Library/Empire Branch downtown.

In her own words, “I got involved with AmeriCorps because I was ready for a change in my life. I had taught adults and adolescents and wanted to see if I could impact the lives of babies and young children in Rhode Island.”

Chontell and her colleagues are certainly making an impact. They are all working on extensive outreach to introduce families and child care providers to library resources such as excellent children’s literature, professional and parenting books, LARKs (learning and reading kits) and programs for children ages birth to 5.

When asked what she has taken away from her experience, Chontell said, “That children can learn a great deal in infancy, and that each helping hand adds to the big picture of a better place for our children.” She also commented that she has gained skills such as how to be more effective at group instruction, how to talk to children to elicit optimal responses from them, how to choose good books for kids, and the importance of reading aloud.

As far as the future is concerned, Chontell plans to continue with divinity school and become an ordained minister in order to better help others. “I will always be active in my community,” Chontell added. “I’ve volunteered since I was 14 years old, and since I’ve come back to Rhode Island, I’ve always found a way to contribute to the community that I live in. Whatever I do with myself, I guarantee it will involve helping someone else.”