LITERACY COOPERATIVE OF GREATER CLEVELAND
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Mission Statement
Our mission is to advance literacy through raising awareness, advocating for public support of literacy initiatives, and strengthening the network to improve literacy across the lifespan.
About This Cause
Literacy is a topic that is rarely discussed, taken for granted by those who are literate, and hidden by those who are low literate. The Literacy Cooperative (TLC) exists to raise awareness and works to integrate literacy services into community initiatives. There are many organizations working to address some aspect of the literacy challenge. Unfortunately, these are disparate efforts, often creating a more challenging system for people to navigate. TLC works to bring cohesion to the system and increase benefits for families seeking services by connecting them with service providers to address their needs. The poverty rate for Cleveland is 29.3% and child poverty is consistently at or near the top in the nation. As of 2020, 54% of adults are not proficient in reading and 64% are not proficient in numeracy. In the 2021-22 school year, 85% of children entering Cleveland Metropolitan School District were assessed as not fully prepared for kindergarten. This literacy crisis will persist for generations unless progress is accelerated in preparing young children for kindergarten. Children that start unprepared in kindergarten are more likely to be below grade level in third grade. Children reading below grade level in third grade are less likely to graduate high school on time or at all. And the cycle continues. To change the current state of low literacy and poverty, we must start early to prepare young children for school and life success. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (DPIL) does that and gives us the opportunity to connect parents to essential services, TLC is building a strong foundation for literacy and success in life and improving how the system can work for families. In Cuyahoga County, TLC leads DPIL, a book gifting initiative that mails a brand-new, age-appropriate book to children each month until the age of five. Exposure to these books enhances literacy and healthy family relationships through reading. There are currently more than 39,000 children enrolled. TLC manages the enrollment and connects with the families to regularly share information and resources. While the families we serve are from varying demographics, access to books and our communications has the greatest impact on low-income families. With your support, we will expand our efforts to target communications by community and zip code to reach our goal of equitable service in communities that have the greatest need, often where race and socio-economic status correlate and individuals suffer from social and health inequities, like the education opportunity and achievement gap. TLC can prioritize communities where kindergarten readiness scores and income level data suggest there are families who could benefit from quality literacy and learning activities, promote these activities and connect them to quality partners and services. TLC has a vast network of partners that address the needs of all members of families. We leverage our partnerships and are intentional about supporting the needs identified by families that lead them on a pathway to economic stability. TLC uses social media channels, email communications, and family engagement workshops to help optimize the families’ access to literacy experiences and environments. We communicate to the 39,000 families via email and text. Nearly seven in ten surveyed families report regularly reading our communications and close to a third (29 percent) report having taken advantage of information, offers, and/or events in the newsletter. Our email open rate is an impressive 40-50%, compared with average open rates closer to 20%. Since 2022, we have offered a virtual Healthy Families Series with presentations by local health practitioners about health-related topics and how to build stronger bodies and brains. Sessions are recorded live and made available for all guardians to view at their convenience on TLC’s YouTube channel. We have a Healthy Families Resource Page on our website with links to the recordings and related resources and share this page link in email communications to all DPIL families. In 2024, we will serve 52,000 Cuyahoga County children through DPIL, creating and enhancing relationships with partner organizations, faith communities, elected officials, and healthcare providers. To optimize children’s healthy development and kindergarten readiness, it is critical that as many children as possible are enrolled in DPIL at birth. We continue to enroll more newborns through partnerships with University Hospitals, MetroHealth, and Cleveland Clinic. We are making strides in working on this with local health care systems as they prioritize early literacy, seeing its impact on the social determinants of health. Here are some examples of the effectiveness of our communications with families. In April 2024 we sent a text to families in the Cleveland Hough neighborhood, that informed them about a community event, PBS Be My Neighbor Day. Immediately there was an increase in registrations. Here is a quote from Denise Hallman at Ideastream, “You really have a miracle list for reaching parents of young children! I have seen an immediate jump in registrations! At 11:00 we had 18 families registered. I just checked it again, and we now have 42 families registered! That's incredible that 24 families have registered in the last hour. Thank you so much!” Denise reported later that many more registrations followed and that our communications were critical for attendance at the event. Last year, DPIL joined the WellSky Social Service Referral Network and has received hundreds of referrals from United Health Care (UHC) for Medicaid clients, to support the goal of promoting kindergarten readiness and reading at grade level in 3rd grade. The UHC team reported that the DPIL referral process has had the additional benefit of supporting their team’s success with screening members and completing health risk assessments. We hope to receive many more referrals in the coming year from other providers and aim to join other such platforms. The Literacy Cooperative partners with the Center for Community Solutions to conduct an annual survey of DPIL families to measure impact and satisfaction. The results consistently show DPIL’s impact. Overall, 78% of all families report reading more often with their child since they began receiving DPIL books and 78% of parents say their child asks to be read to more often. In lower income households, 91% report they read with their child more often and state their child is asking them to read more often. Nine out of ten believe participation in DPIL helps their child prepare for kindergarten. For most respondents (66%), DPIL books comprise at least half of their home libraries. For lower income households, one out of three indicated that DPIL books comprise all or nearly all of their home library. We are particularly pleased that the families we serve report visiting their local libraries more often since they began receiving DPIL books. TLC will continue to survey participants of our learning sessions (e.g. health communications, financial literacy, etc.) and conduct surveys and focus groups to identify the interests and needs of DPIL families as it relates to literacy and educational outcomes. Based on the results, we work with partners to develop sessions and events tailored to the response of families with the intent to increase the number of families participating in literacy activities, enhance their positive interactions, and increase the quality of educational opportunities. A child’s enrollment in DPIL at birth ensures 5 years of continued access to resources and communications from TLC. With so few supports in place for children in this age range, this is a significant step towards system change for families in our community. Our community supports many worthy efforts to address the symptoms of low literacy. We have an opportunity to prevent low literacy by exposing children to books during the first years of their lives, the most optimal time of brain development, and encouraging family reading.