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| Joshua Varela plays with building blocks at the Cal Poly Pomona Children’s Center. Varela and other children will benefit from the recent $15,000 grant from the Los Angeles Times Family Fund. |
The Cal Poly Pomona Children?s Center will expand a reading program for preschoolers thanks to a recent grant of $15,000 from the Los Angeles Times Family Fund.
The money will be used to enhance the Family Literacy Program, which strengthens parent involvement in literacy. It provides youngsters in the Children?s Center with backpacks filled with reading material to take home as well as hosts family workshops on pre-reading and awareness. About 40 children in the center will take part in the reading program.
“The grant will be incredibly helpful,” said Consuelo Rodriguez, director of the Children’s Center. “Some children don’t even know how to hold a book up. This will give children moving into kindergarten a head start by helping them with sounds, letter recognition and phonetic awareness.”
The Los Angeles Times Family Fund serves the many needs of disadvantaged children and youth in Southern California. Donations from Los Angeles Times readers are combined with matching funds from the McCormick Tribune Foundation. The fund then makes charitable grants to nonprofit organizations.
“The Los Angeles Times has a strong commitment of supporting literacy and education programs,” said Gisselle
Acevedo-Franco, vice president of public affairs at the Los Angeles Times. “Cal Poly Pomona’s Children’s Center Family Literacy Program offers students, staff and community parents with much needed quality childcare and educational services. We are glad to be a part of a partnership with the university that brings resources together to benefit children in our community.”