It's Family Literacy Day today. So read a book with your family!
Family literacy programs focus on parents as the means to improve the reading and writing skills of all family members. Family literacy is a powerful way to support parents by showing them how they can help their children become confident and effective communicators.
Check out this website for more information:
http://www.abc-canada.org/en/family_literacy/family_literacy_day/
CBC's Matt Galloway, morning host, 99.1 FM, will interview Robert Munsch between 7:30 am and 8:00 am, about the importance of reading as a family.
CBC's Shelagh Rogers will be talking to Janice Kulyk Keefer, Christopher Dewdney and Kim Echlin, former CBC Literary Award Winners, from noon till 1:00 pm at Ben McNally Books on the west side of Bay St., just south of Queen.
And along the same lines, catch this:
A long-time friend and colleague of mine, former English and English as a Learning Language teacher at Langstaff, e-mailed me yesterday afternoon to let me know that she’d passed my blogsite on to her daughter, whose daughter is a “reading machine,” and has read the Harry Potter series twice. Her family also reads together.
Too coincidental. Read on.
I had to stop for essentials (like Perrier water and bananas) at the Humbertown Loblaws, Royal York Road and Dundas, on my way home. I didn’t have much to buy, so I lined up in the 8-items-or-less line (no less), and what do I see on a small stand, beside the National Enquirer, People Magazine and Your Horoscope, but The Tales of Beedle The Bard by J.K. Rowling, for $8.95, regular $14.50 Canadian, or 6.99 English pounds. Such a bargoon. It’s on remainder.
I picked it up and started to leaf through it, thinking I’d get it for the grandson of a friend of mine. I was next in line, so didn’t have much time to look through it. Impulse buying, you know. Should I, or shouldn’t I, buy it? It reminded me of the time I found a copy of Zamyatin’s We, for $1.99, at Price Chopper’s, East Mall and Rathburn. You’ll recall that this was the book that influenced Orwell to write Animal Farm, and is sometimes touted as the most influential science fiction book of the 20th century. “Food for your mind at the grocery store…” It’s still in the fiction collection at the school library.
But back to The Beedle. The book flipped open to the end pages to reveal Children’s High Level Group: Health, Education, Welfare. “What’s this all about?” It’s my turn to put my groceries on the conveyor belt.
All I had time to read was the first paragraph:
Dear Reader,
Thank you very much for buying this unique and special book. I wanted to take this opportunity to explain just how your support will help us to make a real difference to the lives of so many vulnerable children.
Well, I had to buy it! Read on:
More than 1 million children live in large residential institutions across Europe. Contrary to popular belief, most of them are not orphans, but are in care because their families are poor, disabled or from ethnic minorities. Many of these children have disabilities and handicaps, but often remain without any health or educational interventions. In some cases they do not receive life’s basics, such as adequate food. Almost always they are without human or emotional contact and stimulation.
To change the lives of institutionalized and marginalized children, and try to make sure that no future generation suffers in this way, J. K. Rowling and I set up the Children’s High Level Group (CHLG) charity in 2005. We wanted to give these abandoned children a voice: to allow their stories to be heard.
CHLG aims to bring an end to the use of large institutions and promote ways that allow children to live with families --- their own, foster or national adoptive parents --- or in small group homes.
The campaign helps around a quarter of a million children each year. We fund a dedicated, independent child helpline that provides support and information to hundreds of thousands of children annually. We also run education activities, including the ‘Community Action’ project, in which young people from mainstream education work with special needs children in institutions; and ‘Edelweiss’, which allows young people who are marginalized and institutionalized to express themselves through their creativity and talents. And in Romania, CHLG has created a national children’s council to represent the rights of children, and which allows them to speak out about their own experiences.
But our reach goes only so far. We need funds to scale up and replicate our work, to reach out into more countries and help even more children who are in such desperate need.
CHLG has a unique character amongst non-governmental organizations in this field, namely working with governments and state institutions, civil society, professionals and voluntary organizations, as well as practical providers of services on the ground.
CHLG aims to achieve full implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child across Europe and, ultimately, around the world. In only two years, we have already assisted governments to develop strategies to prevent the abandonment of babies in hospitals and to improve the care of children with disabilities and handicaps, and have developed a manual of best practice in de-institutionalisation.
We are truly grateful for your support in buying this book. These vital funds will allow CHLG to continue our activities, giving hundreds of thousands more children the chance of a decent and healthy life.
To find out more about us, and how you can get further involved, please visit: www.chlg.org.
Thank you,
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne MEP
Co-Chair of CHLG
Did you know all that?
If you’d like a copy of the book, tell me quick, before they’re all gone. I think I’ll have to read it before I pass it along. Also, on the CHLG website, you can sign up for a free newsletter or make a donation. The main focus of their work is done in Romania, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia and the Czech Republic.
Rob
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