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Reading program touches hundreds of thousands of children
When Kiwanians in the Alabama District started a reading program in 1990, it instantly became a favorite project. And now, more than 1 million books and hundreds of thousands of happy children later, it’s an absolute grand slam.
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Joe Dean started the Jean Dean RIF project during his term as Alabama District governor. He continues to run a reading team for the Opelika Kiwanis club.
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“Kiwanians in Alabama—and some in Missouri and Nebraska who long ago began to partner with us—enjoy giving books year after year,” says Cathy Dean Gafford, director of the Jean Dean Reading is Fundamental (RIF) program. “Hundreds of thousands of at-risk young children have benefited because Kiwanians care enough about them to give time and money to meet their early literacy needs.”
The Jean Dean RIF/Kiwanis program has given books to more than 350,000 children and their families. The program targets at-risk children, ages 0-5. Every child in the Head Start program in Alabama receives books, along with children in state-sponsored daycare, housing projects and daycare homes, low-income and special-needs daycares, and some primary schools the Head Start program feeds.
Cathy, a member of the Kiwanis Club of Opelika, Alabama, says the program is “truly a Kiwanis-family project.”
“More than 80 percent of the Kiwanis and Golden K clubs in the district have participated for 17 years, as do a lot of our Circle K clubs, Key Clubs, and some Builders Clubs,” she says. “The Kiwanis International Foundation also has been a part of our project, by providing us with district foundation matching grants.
“We currently provide more than 25,000 at-risk young children a year with more than 75,000 quality, age-appropriate books, and we are deeply involved in tying up a $190,000 capital campaign to provide the program with a permanent warehouse and office space.”
When a project continues to grow such as this one has, it can become difficult to personalize it for the children. But Kiwanians continue to meet and hear stories about children whose lives definitely were touched by the RIF program.
“This year, the first young people we served will be old enough to graduate from college,” Cathy says. “We know some of them. We also have been fortunate that some of these children from around the state, now young people in a major university close by, come to help us in the Jean Dean RIF/Kiwanis RIF Building, because they recognize the name of the program that—many years ago—gave them books and an appreciation for the ‘fun’ in the fundamental skill of reading. High school and elementary school students also have volunteered for that reason. It is pretty exciting to realize our dream of giving these at-risk children hope of doing well in school and life is reaching fruition—and that the plan will continue to develop each year as more children grow up with educations instead of illiterate with no books in their homes.”
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