Connecticut's Urban Reading Initiative

FAIN: GI-50063-09

Connecticut Humanities Council (Middletown, CT 06457-3204)
Bruce Fraser (Project Director: August 2008 to July 2010)
Sandra S. Santy (Project Director: July 2010 to October 2012)

The expansion of reading and discussion programs for at-risk children ages 8-12 and their families in three Connecticut cities over a three-year period and the formation of the Go Read statewide enriched reading coalition and website.

The Connecticut Humanities Council (CHC) seeks $400,000 in National Endowment for the Humanities support to accelerate the development of an integrated system of enriched reading partnerships in the cities of Hartford, New Haven and New London that brings professionally-led book discussion programs to a city-wide array of agencies and organizations currently serving children. Our goal is not to create a brief flurry of reading activity in these non traditional sites but to incorporate after school programs, Boys and Girls Clubs, Catholic Charities, family resource centers,family service agencies, learning centers, agencies serving the families of incarcerated parents and other community organizations who have children as a primary constituency. In the three-year life of the grant, the Council expects to involve at least 10,000 low-income, primarily minority children and families in enriched reading programming.