Charlotte, N.C. (April 6, 2017) – In support of Read Charlotte’s goal of doubling the percentage of third grade students reading on grade level by 2025, the organization’s Transformation Fund is promoting innovation, collaboration, and seeding new programs to address unmet early literacy needs across Mecklenburg County.
“We are thrilled to see the Transformation Fund at work, supporting projects and programs that truly live up to the name,”said Executive Director Munro Richardson. “We are committed to funding solutions, not problems, which will help achieve the 2025 goal for our county.”
When Read Charlotte launched in 2015, funders committed a total of $500,000 a year to the Transformation Fund for the first five years fora total of $2.5 million. To date, Read Charlotte has committed up to about $253,000 through several negotiated grants.
One of the initial grants was made to The Hill Center in Durham, N.C. to customize key components of its online Hill Learning Systems teacher training portal for volunteer literacy tutors. The online training portal will provide Charlotte-Mecklenburg tutors with free foundational training about components of literacy, as well as access to an online library of videos and resources linked to training modules. Volunteers who successfully complete the entire training will be certified as literacy tutors.
“This shows potential for success based on research we’ve reviewed about high-quality tutoring. If we can make this work, it could potentially mean thousands of volunteers from local companies and organizations would be effectively tutoring our kids,” said Richardson.
Read Charlotte is currently working with The Hill Center on the draft version and user-testing will begin later this month. Read Charlotte aims to have the online volunteer tutor training ready by the time school starts this fall.
In January, Read Charlotte launched four Action Learning Teams (ALTs), made up of about 50 community-based organizations and volunteers, to work in the southwestern part of Mecklenburg County dubbed Read Charlotte’s “Transformation Zone.”The four ALTs are Family Engagement, Kindergarten Success, Active Reading and Summer Reading. Each group has been working to address systems barriers that get in the way of children developing language and literacy skills.
The Transformation Fund helps support the work of the ALTs in the “100 Day Challenge” to produce tangible early wins for children and families. The goal is to jump start work in the Transformation Zone as part of the effort to create systems change.
With the support of the Knight Foundation, the teams have been working with a local firm, Faster Glass Consulting, to learn about human centered design (aka design thinking) to develop solutions to systems barriers to improving early literacy. This process involves rapid prototyping and testing of ideas with actual intended endusers.
Each team will reveal its progress at the 100 Day Challenge Celebration in late April.
Read Charlotte makes a limited number of grants from the Transformation Fund using a combination of negotiated and competitive grants.Competitive grants will be announced, as needed, to source solutions to a specific problem identified by Read Charlotte.The first competitive grant request for proposal is expected to be released by the end of the month.
For more information on the Transformation Fund, visit ReadCharlotte.org.
The Transformation Fund is not designed as the single source for early literacy funding. Read Charlotte will also strive to advise area funders on strategic co-funding opportunities.
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