By Paige McKay Kubik | Vice President, Development & Communication
Dear Friend of Sheltering Arms,
Our partner, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, recently released a KidsCount 2010 special report entitled, "Early Warning: Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters." The report says 71% of Georgia's 4th graders score below proficient reading level, a leading indicator as to whether a child will successfully graduate from high school and escape poverty as an adult. That statistic seems to hold up when you consider that Georgia's high school dropout rate is around 22%.
Children from low-income families are six times more likely to drop out of high school and children who struggle academically are 20 times more likely to drop out of high school. Sheltering Arms makes a difference for these children. Every Sheltering Arms child, on average, meets or exceeds 97% of developmental milestones for their age. Our children are some of the most prepared students entering kindergarten. For nearly 90% of our students, however, tuition scholarships are critical to helping their families give them a Sheltering Arms' start in life.
That's why your support through GlobalGiving is so important. Your gift provides needs-based child care tuition scholarships to low-income working families. As a result, parents can keep jobs that put bread on the table without having to resort to low-cost, low-quality child care that puts their child at risk, today and in the future.
There's another way you can help, coming up this September 17. One of the biggest predictors of future reading success for children is book ownership, yet two-thirds of low-income children have no books in the home. Through Operation StoryBook, Sheltering Arms provides 2500 children with a new book every month for their home library. At our kick-off Operation StoryBook Read-A-Thon on September 17, volunteers and VIPs will share their favorite stories and children's books with our little ones. It's a fun day aimed at getting children excited about reading. We'd love for you to join us...just follow the link below to sign up.
Thank you so much for the difference you make possible in the lives of the children and families at Sheltering Arms.
Paige
Links:
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