2022 Literacy Grant Recipients
Phi Kappa Phi is proud to present the 2022 Phi Kappa Phi Literacy Grant recipients. Grants of up to $2,500 are available to Phi Kappa Phi chapters and individual members to fund ongoing literacy projects or to create new initiatives.
Akintonde Abbas
Community Reading Initiative
The Community Reading Initiative is a multi-dimensional initiative that focuses on increasing the love for reading in both children in pre-kindergarten to fourth grade in public schools and adults across low-income communities in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Phi Kappa Phi and Kappa Delta Pi chapters of The University of North Carolina at Charlotte will organize in-school reading events and build classroom libraries at the Niner University Elementary school in Charlotte. Community book boxes will also be built and installed at strategic locations serving as neighborhood libraries for low-income communities around the UNC Charlotte campus.
Kathryn Accurso
REAL Talk! - A Teacher Book Club about Race, Education, and Language
REAL Talk (Race, Education, and Language Talk) is an international, intergenerational book club for teachers across North America to help support them in building racial literacies to transform teaching. Every three months, members meet virtually to discuss a book that highlights issues of racial and linguistic diversity in schools and/or society and is challenged to make action-oriented connections to their practice. The goal of REAL Talk is to assist teachers in developing new knowledge, literacies, and relationships in pursuit of anti-racist teaching that does less harm than pedagogies of the past.
Tia Agan
San Angelo Reads!
San Angelo Reads! is supported through the partnership of the Angelo State University Phi Kappa Phi chapter and San Angelo Independent School District. The program is a community-wide literacy initiative that provides a book giveaway and related literacy activities for elementary students in Grades 2-5 to help open doors for students to experience the joy of reading. The funds from this grant will be used to provide books and literacy materials during the critical summer months and extend its reach to students pre-K through fifth grades in the 2022-2023 school year.
Libby Bischof
Welcoming New Mainers: Diverse Children's Books for Refugee Families in Maine
In recent years, Maine has welcomed thousands of refugees from countries such as Angola, Somalia, Afghanistan, the Sudan, Syria, Iraq and many others. The Literacy Grant funds will enable the University of Southern Maine Phi Kappa Phi chapter to provide curated bags of popular children’s books in English in the students’ home languages to Maine refugee families with young children, pre-K to sixth grade. The goal of the program is to provide diverse and representational books as motivational tools to assist young children in English language acquisition with their families, as well as make them feel welcomed and at home in the community.
Jenny Havlovick
Speech-Language Pathology and Public School Literacy Collaboration
The Speech-Language Pathology and Public School Literacy Collaboration project is a collaboration between the Communication Sciences and Disorders department at the University of Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Public School District. The project involves training speech-language pathology graduate clinicians to provide literacy instruction to elementary students who struggle with reading. The funds from this grant will help provide literacy kits and supplies that will be used during the literacy instruction.
George E. Hendricks
Love of Literacy Project
The Love of Literacy Project expands upon the ongoing work of the Children Understanding Books (grades K-2) and Methodist Kids Association (grades 3-5) collaborative endeavor in which representatives from Methodist University and Hay Street United Methodist Church provide weekly one-on-one social and academic mentoring to Margaret Willis Elementary students. Students will work with a children’s book author, publish a student-created book with a social-emotional focus, and expand classroom and home library materials for 320 K-5 students in a low-wealth school in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Glenn Hutchinson
Exchange for Change: Writing Courses in South Florida Prisons
Exchange for Change is a non-profit organization that offers writing and literature classes to the incarcerated at three correctional institutions, two jails, and one juvenile residential center in South Florida. In collaboration with Florida International University, each semester the students present their work and receive a certificate of completion upon graduation. In addition, Exchange for Change publishes work from the classes in editions of Don't Shake the Spoon. The Phi Kappa Phi Literacy Grant will help fund this project through the purchase of supplies, books and the printing of certificates.
Lisa Jones-Moore
Mini Books to Guide Sixth Grade Novel Studies
Mini Books to Guide Sixth Grade Novel Studies is an opportunity to purchase two class sets of adolescent novels for Lumpkin County Middle School sixth-grade classes and to create a mini book with accompanying comprehension strategies for each sixth-grade student. The grant provides an opportunity for students at the University of North Georgia to create literacy strategies and teach both sixth-graders and their teachers how to use the mini book and enhance comprehension.
Dilpreet Kaeley
Rx for Inclusive and Early Literacy
The Rx for Inclusive and Early Literacy Project is a literacy initiative that promotes school readiness, family relational health and books that will expose families to diverse populations and culture at urban Toledo clinics to improve local kindergarten readiness scores. Partnering with Reach Out and Read and the University of Toledo Department of Pediatrics, the goal is to educate parents to increase the home literacy environment and assess literacy developmental milestones at each visit.
Elysia Lin
Empower HerStory: A Community Storytelling and Expressive Arts Workshop
Empower HerStory is a community storytelling initiative that seeks to build a platform for art literacy and creative self-expression, as well as celebrate and uplift women’s voices in Richmond, Virginia. In a student-led workshop model, individuals, and especially youth, who identify as women explore expressive art exercises and creative writing techniques to develop dynamic narratives of self-empowerment. Participants’ efforts will be recognized through a full-length digital and print “femPower” zine, which will serve as a collection of generated works and as a testimony to the lived experiences of young women today.
Victor Mack
100 Ways to Nutritional Literacy
In partnership with the 100 Black Men of Greater Charlotte and The University of North Carolina at Charlotte Center for STEM Education Pre-College Program, 100 Ways to Nutritional Literacy is a program for middle and high school students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region. The purpose of the initiative is for its participants to understand the link between nutrition and health; demonstrate how diet impacts school and extra-curricular activity performance; and gain knowledge and skill in culinary arts to promote a healthy lifestyle. The target audience consists of African-American and other traditionally-marginalized populations who do not have consistent access to healthy foods and/or positive examples of healthy lifestyles.
Liberatus J. Rwebugisa
The Student Success Center Project: Helping Every Child Succeed Educationally
Inaugurated in 2019, the SSC Project is an academic initiative aimed at fostering student success in rural northwest Tanzania. The SSC Project is an academic success program designed to foster educational improvement, student achievement, and community sustainability through access to free tutoring and high-quality curriculum books. The grant will help purchase additional textbooks.
Allison Skiple
York Literacy Project
The York Literacy Project is a collaborative project between Elmhurst University’s Service Learning Program and The York Community Resource Center in Lombard, Illinois. This literacy project aims to foster literacy skills, including reading, writing, spelling and comprehension in YCRC students in grades 1-5. The project connects Elmhurst University students majoring in Communication Sciences and Disorders and/or Spanish with after-school students to tutor at YCRC, emphasizing biliteracy and biculturalism, which is representative of the students being served. With the aid of the Phi Kappa Phi Literacy Grant, the project will purchase new books, supplies, and supports to continue strengthening all aspects of literacy.