>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Good afternoon. Welcome to the Library of Congress Literacy Awards program to recognize best practices in reading promotion. I'm Kathryn Mendenhall, Director of National Programs here at the Library of Congress, which is in the National and International Outreach Service Unit. The Center for the Book, which administers the Literacy Awards program is also organizational in this service unit. You are all here to demonstrate how your impassioned work can be replicated and shared with others to achieve the extraordinary success we're celebrating today. Our hope is that new partnerships will be formed, new dialogue will be held, not just with the Library of Congress, but among yourselves and with each other so that you can see what others are doing and use their ideas to make your programs even better. It's really a unique opportunity to have all of you here today from near and far. Since its founding in 1800, the Library of Congress's mission has been one of disseminating knowledge. Thirty years ago, in transmitting a report to Congress in response to a congressional resolution authorizing a study of the changing role of the book in the future, what the Librarian of Congress at the time, who was Daniel Boorstin, stated in his transmittal letter is applicable today. He said, "What we do about books and reading in the next decades will crucially affect our citizen's opportunities for enlightenment and self-improvement, their ability to share in the wisdom and delights of civilization and their capacity for intelligent self-government. There could be no more appropriate effort to fulfill the hopes of our nation's founders nor any more appropriate celebration of the Bicentennial of our constitution than to aim to abolish illiteracy." The Literacy Awards benefactor, David M. Rubenstein, established these awards with the idea the by recognizing outstanding literacy efforts both in the United States and abroad, public attention will be drawn to the continuing need for literacy services. Mr. Rubenstein was unable to be here with us today, but he sends his hardy congratulations and gratitude to you. As you all know, it is difficult to learn if one cannot read. So, I too applaud you and congratulate you for making it possible for people to reach their full potential by learning through reading. Thank you. I'll now turn the program over to John Cole, Director of the Center for the Book. [ Applause ] >> Thank you, Kathryn. Well, this is a big day for literacy. Before we proceed with the best practices part of this, I'm going to give you the -- today is the official day of the announcement of not only our literacy prizes, but of the best practice winners. And I do want to say that we have this year a two part event with both the prize winners and the best practices people. And today is best practices day. But it's only polite and proper that I mention the three other prize winners and announce that they are going to be the prize winners for 2015. The three other prizes are the David Rubenstein Prize named for our funder and the winner is First Book, which is a local organization. [ Applause ] The American prize, which goes to an organization based in the United States goes to United Through Reading. Let's give them a round of applause. [ Applause ] And the international prize goes to Beanstalk, which was a best practices prize winner last year. They are not here. They are in England, but let's give them a round of applause. [ Applause ] And we do have representatives from First Book and I think United Through Reading here, Alison Morris from First Book, would you wave your hand and take a round of applause? [ Applause ] And Kristin Driscoll, are here from United Through Reading? There she is. Thank you. [ Applause ] So, we congratulate you and we are eager to continue to celebrate your good work as well as the good work of our wonderful best practices people who are with us today. One more brief announcement. We had a meeting this morning of the Library of Congress Advisory Board for our Literacy Awards and several of the members are here this afternoon. And I'd like to have them stand when I announce them and let's hold our applause for the end, after they all sit down. The first one on my list is Karen Lots from Candlewick. Karen. They may be seated close together for all I know. I'm guessing. Lesley Farmer who is from California State, somewhere. Lesley, are you close by? There you are. Sorry. Karen Ristow [assumed spelling] who is actually the Chair of our American prize. I know you're here, Karen. Yes, you are. Laura Bailet from Nemours Bright Start who is on our board. Cynthia Hearn Dorfman. Cynthia is here. Susan Hildreth is not here. She was -- joined us by telephone this morning for the meeting. Linda Bird Johnson Robb is here. Wonderful advocate for children's literacy. Lynda. And, finally, Christie Vilsack from U.S. Aid is here. And Michael Suarez is here. Michael -- some place. I think. There he is. Sorry. It's bright up here. And Michael Trucano from World Bank. Let's give them all a round of applause. [ Applause ] I must say this board has helped formulate the program. We're now in our third year. This is our third round of awards. We look forward to the next two years and we hope much longer. But Mr. Rubenstein has graciously funded this program for five years. And one of the results we want you to pick up, if you didn't get coming in, it's this Best Practices program which has each of your organizations in it and we want you to use it in every way to promote yourselves, to promote literacy, to promote your connection to the Library of Congress. This is what this program is all about. And you represent it from all parts of the world. Thank you. We're now going to present the certificates to the best practices people and to do the presenting, I'm pleased to call to the podium Guy Lamolinara who is the Center for the Book's Communication Officer. I will present the certificates. Our photographer is ready. Are you ready? Well, here we go. Guy? Thanks, John. I'll read the names in alphabetical order by organization. So, could you please come up and accept your award from John? The first person is Basara Kaseem [assumed spelling] from Alif Laila Book Bus Society. [ Applause ] Next is Katrina Morse from the Family Reading Partnership. [ Applause ] Next is Tara Libert from Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop. [ Applause ] Next is Sapargul Mirseitova from the Kazakhstan Reading Association. [ Applause ] Next is Charmead Schella from Literacy Alberni Society. [ Applause ] >> Of the country so much. >> Oh, I don't have -- next is Danielle Verbiest from the Literacy Council of Montgomery County, Maryland. [ Applause ] Todd Bol from the Little Free Library. [ Applause ] Matt Sironas [assumed spelling] from Men with a Message Braille Program. [ Applause ] Shanti Shovashanka from the National Resource Center for Non Formal Education. [ Applause ] Karen Hart from Picturebooks. [ Applause ] And Zev Lowe from Wordreader. [ Applause ] Also, I want to mention three others who are not here right now. One is Sister Mary M. Buckley from Escuela Santo Nino Jesus and she's expected later today. And not here are representatives from Stiftung Ellison [assumed spelling] and Book Aid. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. We have some resource people from the Library of Congress who are joining us for the presentations and to be part of the discussion. One of them is Karen Keninger who is from the head of our National Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. I'm not calling on her now, but I just want to recognize her and let's give her a round of applause for being here today. [ Applause ] And a second is Leanne Potter who is the Head of the Educational Outreach part of the Library of Congress which is a close partner of the Center for the Book, the administrator of the award. And part of the new educational outreach effort of the Library of Congress which coincides very beautifully with the literacy awards program and one of her specialties is teacher outreach. And Leanne is not able to stay for the whole afternoon so I've asked her to say a few words before we start the presentations and the program. Leanne, I can't see you. Where are you? There you are. Thank you. Let's give her a hand. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. Good afternoon. Thanks so much. I explained to John that there were a couple of things on my agenda this afternoon that made me have to shorten my time. One is we are hosting the very first online conference for teachers tonight and tomorrow night. And we've got programs running from 4 O'clock until 8 O'clock tonight as well as tomorrow. And my son broke his collar bone on Saturday night. So, my schedule at home has shifted a little. And the beauty of the online conference is I can be involved at home. So, later I'm going to go home, get my son, get him home, get him comfortable, and then I'm going to get to work. We have a session tomorrow night at 6 O'clock on Literacy in Primary Sources. So, if any of you are available and want to participate in an online conference, feel free to join us tomorrow night at six. If you go to the Library's website, do a search on online conference, you'll get the link. It will also be recorded and I'll be sure to share the link with John so he can share that with you as well. Wanted to say a couple of other things beyond the online conference. As John said, my team and I work very closely with classroom teachers. And our job is to alert them to the online resources in the collections of the Library of Congress. We're all about teaching with primary sources. And more and more we're finding that the teachers that we work with are so committed to literacy efforts and are finding some very clever ways of integrating primary sources and their literacy outreach, whether it's identifying primary sources that help to illustrate novels that their teachers are working with, whether it's identifying writing strategies that can come from working with primary sources. Some really creative things are going on and we are trying to reflect more and more of those best practices within our blog. I've got some bookmarks for you. If you go on the Library's website and you just go to the loc.gov/teachers section, that's where you can sign up for the RSS feed of our blog. Really encourage you to do that. We love finding out what you're doing and I have to say I love this event and I so regret not being able to hang out this afternoon. And I need to tell you that my folks are coming to visit for Thanksgiving and we're going to build ourselves a little library. So, the fact that the Little Library folks are here, my dad's actually pretty tickled. He's one of those -- you know, he's one of those retirees who got rid of all of his tools and saws and things. And then he comes to my house and wants to do projects. This is the perfect Thanksgiving project so thank you for that. Congratulations to all of you. If you ever have an interest in working with educators and more closely with the primary source materials on the Library, please reach out to me and my team. We are really excited about what you're doing and know that there's some terrific opportunities for great synergy. Congratulations again. Thanks for your time. [ Applause ] >> Thank you, Leanne. You can see that Leanne is -- her energy carries over to all of our programs and we're very pleased that she's working closely with us, with the Center for the Book, and with the Literacy programs. Let me say a couple words about what we're going to do next. We thank you all for working hard to develop on quick notice, short presentations about your best practices. I know that some of you have Power Points, some of you do not. But what we are going to do is to invite you to the podium and John Regan [assumed spelling] who is our audiovisual specialist has your PowerPoint if it has been given to him. If not, we will proceed with your particular best practice. The note -- the idea was that you would present for at least five minutes about the idea of yours and you would have at least five minutes to take questions and answers from the audience. If not, I may have a question. And this will be a warmup for the -- the idea is that we will do as many of these brief presentations as we can. We hope to do them all eventually. We will take a break part way through and then we'll come back to our discussion tables where we will have either members of our board at those tables. And I'll remind you of the specialties that some of our board members. Karen will be at one of the tables. Karen will be at the table actually where we know we have some best practices people who would like to meet her. A word about best practices if I may before we start. The literacy program from the beginning knew that we needed to honor more than just the three winners because the purpose of this literacy awards program is to raise awareness in society in general, nationally and internationally, about the importance of literacy, promoting it, and also finding new organizations to be involved in it. And Mr. Rubenstein's idea was two-fold. One was we do honor those organizations that are already involved in the battle against illiteracy. We do hope that it draws new attention to literacy and brings new groups in. His feeling was that literacy, while -- when Kathryn earlier read from Dr. Borstein's statement -- that was the man who created the Center for the Book, the Librarian of Congress. And that was back in -- it would have been the early '80s from the report on the future of the book, we were worried about the future of books and reading then. Then the technology that Dr. Borstein addressed and we were starting to worry about -- this was before the internet -- was television. And when television came a lot of people thought, "Uh-oh, this is going to be the end of the book." And one of Dr. Borstein's charges when we did the Book in the Future was to will at the problem and to look at the current technologies and to propose some solutions. And his solution, which ran through a little bit of the quote that Kathryn read, was that the problem isn't technology. The problem that actually technology can be combined and used to promote books and reading. And that's what is really the symbol of the Center for the Book's interest in part. But that the real problem was illiteracy and what our country did about illiteracy in the long run was what was really important. And that is reflected actually by Mr. Rubenstein two -- almost a decade and a half later who felt that literacy was falling off of the national agenda as a problem. And that it didn't get as much attention as it had in the past. And that another reason for our program in addition to raising the awareness and congratulating the winners is to involve more groups, expand the definition of literacy into society so society realizes how important literacy is. And just a final example from our literacy awards program, we are reaching out and doing symposia and how I've met a few of you was -- one was through the symposium we did on literacy and poetry which brought in poet groups interested in promoting poetry and literacy. We're doing one in the spring on health and literacy. Again, trying to expand the definition of literacy the point out, in this case, how health in many ways is a literacy problem and that world should be involved in literacy as we are -- as either educators or librarians or people who've had a record of being involved in the field. So, it's with that in mind that I not only congratulate you, but am eager to pick up ideas that are in this book. So, a further reference will always be -- for your organization, your page in this book. But also this will be the basis, I hope, for some of the discussions this afternoon where when you sit next to somebody who is from another organization, that you will be able to see what they do and that by the time the day is finished, we'll know more about each other's programs and perhaps some new partnerships. The program will end -- this discussion will end at 4:30 when, in fact, for our guests we are providing tours of this beautiful Jefferson Building, which you're part of. Which opened in 1897 when the Library of Congress really assumed its national role. And the day doesn't conclude with that. We will have a reception over in our other -- another building across the street, the Madison Building. You will be led there by your guide. And another -- after the reception, which is between 5:30 and 6:30, Lisa Scol -- help me, somebody. Scottoline. Sorry. I was thinking of the food. Lisa Scottoline who is a famous mystery writer and a friend of the Library of Congress, a frequent visitor to our National Book Festival has a new book, but she's also a literacy advocate and she is going to talk to us a little bit about literacy. But a lot of her fans will be there because this is publication day for a new Lisa Scottoline mystery. And there will be a book signing following. And so I hope you can stay for that as well. And we will be done at 7:30. All of that said, I now want to begin the presentations. And we're going to follow the list that Guy developed which is alphabetical. And the first person I'm going to call on is Basarat Kazim, Kazim perhaps. Sorry about the pronunciation ahead of time. All right. And it's at the Laila Book Bus Society. All right. Thank you. But you are from Pakistan. >> Yes. >> I have that part right. So, please come on up. And we'd like to learn about your best practice. Let's give her a little encouragement. [ Applause ] >> Yes. Literacy and why literacy? In a country like Pakistan where the literacy rate is really low, we felt very strongly that -- sorry. I turned it off? Yeah [laughing]. So, will you just run the next slide then? We did feel very strongly that books and children need to come together. And since 1978, that's what the Alif Laila Book Bus has been doing. Next please? Before this, there were no libraries -- children's libraries in Pakistan. And this library that started off in a double decker bus with books as passengers was stationary. And it drew children to it like it was a magnet really. Also, friends of children, adults who had retained the child within ran to this place. And I think they gave it their stamp of approval. And that is how a very poor project -- because it was I think even poorer than a church mouse. We had no money at all. And it continued to run. And I suppose that you know when something is 37 years old, there's stories and stories and stories -- next slide please? So, the library took on a life of its own and it continued to grow. Whereas because once people were tickled by it and they felt that you know, "What was this old double decker bus all about? Why was it drawing children?" And at that time even the governor of the Punjab sent some [inaudible] there and said, "You know we have really big libraries. There's a Punjab public library and that's always sad and gloomy. And I believe this children's library attracts a lot of children. So, what's happening there?" And they found out that it was just trust. It was a belief in the children. It was a belief in books. It was a belief that a connection between a child and a book was a very vital thing. And so the governor then gifted to the society a building which become the reference library and that happened in '84. Next please? After that, we also felt that because libraries were committee centers essentially and there were lots of activities that could happen in libraries, we started the hobby clubs project which was actually skill based. And the wonderful thing was that we were drawing children from the public sector where I'm very sorry to say that teaching is by rote and children were having to memorize. Sadly, they still do. So, to our minds at Alif Laila, this was not really learning. This was being forced to maybe pass exams perhaps. And sometimes, I mean, it's really so ridiculous that children even need to memorize the commas and the full stops in the sentences, in the textbooks. So, the hobby clubs were actually project based learning centers where the children could invent, innovate through low cost materials, build things. And we were pretty ambitious because in the '80s, Alif Laila was the first project to have computers for children in Pakistan. And then we did electronics and we did mechanics and we did craft and art. So, through all these projects they also learned that book knowledge could actually be translated into practice. And if certain models or things were going wrong, they knew how to correct them. So, they were thinking and that's what we wanted them to do. Next please? Yes. And then the mobile library came in which was called the Story Teller. [ Foreign Language Spoken ] -- In Urdu, which means, again, the story teller. This goes around to school. Because they don't have libraries. And this is a mobile program which become very very successful. And I'm really really happy to tell you that the government is hoping to replicate it. So, it's out in the newspapers. It's on our Facebook page as well that the government of Punjab has said that they will start a mobile library program. They don't want to acknowledge us. We don't mind as long as they do that and they let the libraries run all over. Next. Next slide, please? Yes. We had a rather bad earthquake two days back I Pakistan. But fortunately the epicenter was not heavily populated so there was not a lot of loss. But in 2005, in [foreign language spoken]. Sorry. The earthquake was terrible. And at that point in time Alif Laila's also the Pakistan chapter for IBBY, which is the International Board on Books for Young People. And IBBY gave us the funds to set up a library for these children in Bagh. And that's the library you see here. It was called [foreign language speak], rainbow. And, again, I mean there's just so many beautiful stories because so many children who were completely traumatized because the earthquake happened when they were in school. And I remember myself going and working with them through puppets and play. And one child was very scared to come anywhere near a crowd kept sort of standing outside and then all of a sudden, when she saw the puppets, she ran in and she stayed. And then when she ran out and she told her mother, "I passed the exam." So, that was her exam of being able to overcome her fear. Next please? Yes. These are, again, the different libraries, the different looks. Because we do set up libraries all over Pakistan now. Next please? This was a project that we did which was called Scheherazade Ka Khazana. The Alif Laila gets its name from the Thousand and One Nights. And, of course, Scheherazade told those thousand and one stories to keep herself alive. And actually, you know, changed the way that the king thought because he was not a good king at all before he got involved in her stories and then married her. So, Alif Laila, the project itself has been struggling like Scheherazade and keeping itself through telling of different tales. And so we named one project Scheherazade Ka Khazana, which means Scheherazade's treasure trove. And actually did a thousand and one books and sent them, again, all over Pakistan. This we did with Save the Children. And they were the funding organization. Yes, next please. So, the -- this is a library that we did in Sheikhupura which is on the outskirts of Lahore. And, yes, now we have small mobile libraries going into those areas where the big story teller bus cannot go. And the children of the community come out and they take their books and they read and then it visits them every week or every two weeks. Yes, next please. These are libraries that we started in Madrassah. Madrassahs are religious schools. And the children from the Madrassahs, again, just learn the Qur'an by rote. And we felt that it was necessary for them to know a little more and to be excited about the world and books and other children to get a better understanding of the Qur'an. So, these are libraries that we've set up there. Next please. These are Rickshaw libraries. These little three-legged rickshaws that go into, you know, very -- are my five minutes up? >> Yes, they are. >> OK. I'm done [laughing]. Yes. So, any questions? >> We have time for one question but I think we're going to have to limit this to no more than 10 minutes total. And you've managed to give us more information, but part of it was in your Q and A time. So, if you don't mind. >> No. I don't mind. I don't mind. >> So, if there's time -- if there's one question, we'll take it? If not, let's thank her and we will continue the discussion, as I said, later after the break. But thank you very much. That was [inaudible]. >> And I'm really sorry I took more time. I never ever do, but I think this crowd was so phenomenal that I just wanted to keep talking. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. [ Applause ] Next is Katrina Morse from the Family Reading Partnership. Katrina? >> We're two, we're a team. We're a team. >> We're a team. >> OK. Hi, I'm Katrina and this is Eliza Stilwell who's my Co-Director and we're honored to have our founder in the audience, Bridget Hoverman. So, we're happy she can be here to share the award with us. >> Yes. So, Family Reading Partnership. We do more than give books, we change lives. And to just try to quickly tell the story of this amazing organization in five minutes. It started with -- sure. Here? >> Yes. >> OK. It started with, again, our founder hearing from kindergarten teachers in our community that children were still entering school with little or no book experience. And she convened community members and said, "What can we do about this? What can we do to insure that all children in our community have early, frequent, and pleasurable experiences with books at home?" So, that is how the story began 18 years ago. And our goal is, our mission is to create a culture of literacy one book, one child, one family at a time. And this is what this looks like. We really are focusing on supporting family reading practices at home, ensuring book ownership for children, and really working within existing partnerships within our community. That's how the magic happens. And the way that works, we do have 12 different programs. Whoops. I get to say one second about that. We did bring materials with brochures that go in more depth about the programs, but we start before the beginning. So, in our community every expectant family receives a book from their obstetrician or midwife encouraging them to start reading even before the baby's born. At birth, they are gifted with The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which Eric Carle calls a story of hope. And it's in a bag that says, "Love me, feed me, take me to the library." we have a program really modeled after Reach Out and Read but we call it Books to Grow On. And whoops, again, in our community, every child beginning at their two month well child checkup receives a book from their pediatrician with the prescription, "read to me," signed by the pediatrician. Again, we recognize that when books are given through trusted partnerships the value of that book is increased. And also that all children in our community are receiving the same books. So, we are building community through gifting these books. Also, each of these books is sponsored by a local business or foundation so that it's a way to include everybody in this process. OK. We like to mark special occasions. So, children are welcomed to kindergarten, again, county-wide -- whoops -- with a Welcome to School book. And this is what it looks like. So, kinds in our community -- all kids in our community receive all these books. This is the collection that they have by the time they are four years old. OK. We also realize that it's important to have book access and our goal of creating a culture of literacy means that books -- there has to be an abundance of books everywhere. So, we have 50 Bright Red Bookshelves, which circulate gently used children's books throughout the community. And what's special about this is each bookshelf has a tender. It might be a family. It might be an organization. But throughout the year we do book drives. April is Faith in Books Month for Family Reading Partnership so all the religious congregations collect books. They come back to our organization. Volunteers clean them, sort them, put them on bookshelves. Then our Bright Red Bookshelves tenders can come collect them, and bring them out there to their shelf. OK. We have an annual event in two weeks. You're all invited in Ithaca, New York. I forgot to say we were from Ithaca. Kids' Book Fest, a celebration focusing on books. Every school aged child -- actually pre-K through 3rd grade receives the featured book, which this year is -- out theme is The World of Eric Carle, The Mixed-Up Chameleon. And the entire community celebrates this -- celebrates books and reading. OK. We recognize that in creating this culture we also need to have more resources for families with greater need. So, during the holiday season, we have Give the Gift of Reading. Families at WIC sites can choose a brand new book, wrap it, and have it as part of their children's holiday celebration. We have a new Welcome to WIC book. So, Rah Rah Radishes. If you haven't read it, you need to. It's fabulous. It's the joy of vegetables in a ruckus chant. And, again, this weaving of books throughout family's life throughout the community. We have a wonderful program called Read Along Songs, which goes out to Headstart and Pre-K kids. And, again, it's a tool for family engagement in that it uses music along with children can hear the books, they can read the pictures or they can hear the books sung. And I'm going to have Katrina just speak briefly about these next -- these next materials which are tools for family engagement. Yeah. We developed three special tools for family engagement. First one is a Read to Me Calendar. This is -- hopefully some of you have it because we have it in our packets that you're welcome to take back with you. This is -- oh. Just. >> It goes by itself. >> Oh, it does? Oh, OK. OK. Well, anyway the calendar is filled with illustrations from nationally known children's book illustrators and all of them are about reading together. So, the calendar goes to Pre-K and Headstart families. In December, they get to take it home and wrap it for their families and bring it back as a gift. They also have it in the classroom so they can make a school to home connection. Then -- did we miss one? OK. So At Home with Books. I had the pleasure of writing and illustrating. It's a story about the bear family and all the fun they have reading at home. But woven into the story is our tips for parents on how to read. So, it gives ways and methods of how you can have fun with reading aloud. And we also developed materials so that Headstart and Pre-K classrooms and home based programs can use this as a way to develop a culture of literacy in homes. And Love Those Letters is -- it does go by itself. OK. Love Those Letters is a book. It's a brand new alphabet book that was borne out of a need in our community to have a consistent key words throughout the community so that when children went to school they all learned the alphabet through different keywords, the same keywords from school to school. And there is -- this was a big collaborative effort. We have someone who made a dance and a song. I did the illustrations for the book. We also have school materials that are used in classrooms. So, that's given to Pre-K and kindergarten and Headstart families in classrooms. >> And, again, the idea is about having children not just learn the alphabet but love the alphabet, really connecting families and children around the joy of learning letters. OK. So, we should have been done, but we weren't. We recognized all of these things were happening and yet we needed to start earlier. So, our newest initiative is called Every Baby Every Day Talk Sing Read Play. And we created a community call to action with an envisioning, again, what would it take in our community to have every baby grow up surrounded by words, songs, and stories right from the start. What would we need to do? So, we created a community-wide invitation, giant, nine by 12 foot banners on buildings throughout our community saying, "Spread the word. Be a part of it." We -- there is going up at our grocery store. Lawn signs, we have 500 lawn signs. We put them in flocks and said, "Take one! Share the message. Bring it home." And people did. And our mayor has a lawn sign and we had all our community leaders record public service announcements and say, "Come on. We can do this." Very compelling messages. And we train -- we recognize that babies and toddlers, there's often empty waiting for them in places like WIC and social service agencies and even in child care. So, we trained baby reading buddies to be people that went out and did talk, sing, read, play, modeling and supporting. Families through our home visiting program through the health department receive a special bag of books from their nurses at their seven month visit prenatally. And there they are happy to bring our message out with their message. And our last part of this is we convened all six of our county libraries for this initiative called Babies Belong at the Library and issue a Baby's First Library Card with that book at birth, our Welcome Baby book. These libraries also agreed that there would be no fine on board books to really encourage all families and our message was, "Come. Stay. Play. Let the libraries be one of the first places that families bring babies and never stop going." So, that is our reading magic. OK. A little more than five minutes. No time for questions. Sorry. We will answer your questions later. OK. >> I feel like the ice man commeth. You know, I'm creeping up behind, but I think we need a new bargain and that is every group gets 10 minutes max and I'm going to start edging up about seven minutes. And if you'd like to take the 10 minutes, there will just be no questions. But if you want -- can do it in five minutes, we'll have a chance to have questions. But, as I said, the real other way to look at it is we're warming up for the discussion and if you have further questions about the group, look at -- sit at the tables together and you can do kind of a round robin, "I'd like to know more about something," and we'll make that a different kind of discussion so we have a chance for everyone to get in. Now, I must say though, Katrina mentioned Bridget Hoverman who is the founder. And Bridget is with us and I'd like her just to stand up and take a bow. Bridget, thank you for founding Family Reading Partnership. [ Applause ] Our next speaker is Tara Libert, Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop from District of Columbia. Tara? There you are. [ Applause ] It's so exiting. I've got so many good ideas. I want to do the rickshaw libraries with the guys and ride around in DC just -- I'm so excited to learn all this stuff. So, we are local, not from far away Pakistan and less than a mile from here at the DC jail something magical happens every Tuesday. Young boys who are 16, 17 years old, most have dropped out of school. Most have never read a book cover to cover, written a poem, and they're all charged with felony crimes, armed robbery, series crimes, begin -- open a book and begin a journey of transformation. It's pretty amazing. We have a video so I'll let the video take you inside the jail, which is hard to get into. But we -- a couple of big -- couple of points I wanted to share. In a prison, very little is your own choice, so a big part of our book club, it's just like any regular book club is a book ballot. So, this is what they get to choose the book that we're going to talk about that week. And these are some popular books and we can share these with you. And they learn to agree to disagree. And it's young men who have lifelong enemies on the street, with violence in their neighborhood, learn that, "I can agree. I can say I don't like that book or that character, but I respect your opinion." And it's a pretty amazing thing to watch how they become readers and they join a new club instead of the street gang. They become a book club member. So, take it away Don. We'll show the video. [ Music and Sirens ] >> To my teenager is under arrest. >> First of all, the teens gave a statement to police without their parents present. >> He's now being held without bond. >> Three of four teenagers have now died. >> We have 9News crews going to the scene. >> It was the only life they knew. >> Back then I didn't really care about anyone. >> I just [inaudible] the streets. That was my job. >> Jose and William were teenagers charged with crimes in Washington, D.C. As juveniles treated as adults, they ended up here at the DC jail. [ Music ] >> I just decided to do -- hang around with the wrong crowd and it finally caught up to me. >> Behind bars with nowhere to run, isolation and loneliness caught up with them too. >> I didn't have any type of hope of ever going home. >> Little did they know, a second chance would come along, a chance for them to make things right again. >> My name is Tara Libert, I am the Co-Founder and Deputy Director of the Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop. >> I'm Kelly Taylor and I'm Executive Director of Free Minds. >> I was incarcerated sitting in a jail cell contemplating on what I want to do with myself, what I was going to be. And all of a sudden Free Minds came into my life and helped me out. >> What'd you guys think? Off the top, thumbs up, thumbs down? >> First of all -- >> Free Minds, a book club that introduces reading and creative writing to young inmates. >> We're reaching these kids at a really critical point in their lives. These kids are coming home and it might be two years, it might be four years, but they are coming home and we need to consider how do we want them coming back. >> At first, it wasn't easy to convince William and Jose to join. >> I was like Free Minds Book Club? I don't want to read no books. >> I hated reading. >> But Free Minds never gave up. >> I was following blindly. I realized -- >> Eventually for William and Jose, the books led them to a new world, a world of possibilities, a place they'd never dreamt of. [ Music ] And sometimes to a world that was very familiar. >> One of them that I relate a lot to is called My Bloody Life. It was about this young guy that, he just got himself caught up in a lot of things. He involved himself with gangs and then, you know, he got incarcerated and then he finally say, you know, the light. He decided to change. It was very inspiring. >> Soon, they also discovered the power of writing their own poetry. >> When you read a book, it's like -- and write poetry, it's like it opens up a brand new side of you, a side you never knew that you had in you. [ Music ] >> It made me stop to think that I really do care, that I really do want to change. If I didn't put that on paper I didn't -- I don't think I would have realized it. [ Music ] >> When it was time to go home, time to enter the outside world once again, Free Minds was there. >> I never thought that I had people -- it was people out here that would care for me like Free Minds. Kelly, Tara, they kept in touch with me every month, regular basis. >> They helped these young men find training. And build a path to their future. >> I don't know. I've never built anything before and once, you know, you actually got into doing the boats and building them and actually starting them from scratch, when you actually finish them, you know, I got a sense of pride. You know, like, "Yeah. I built that boat." >> Congratulations. [ Applause and Cheering ] [ Music ] >> Kelly and I knew they could do it, but they didn't know they could do it and now they know they could do it. I'm so excited! >> Now that world of possibility they'd only read about is suddenly becoming a reality. William and Jose now have jobs working with a local construction company. They opened up their lives all because these two opened a book. >> Basically they changed my life around. >> It gave me hope. It kind of gave me a place, you know to still have dreams and faith that, you know, things were going to be OK. >> Now, others are following in their steps. >> It hurts to see myself in jail. >> Reading and writing their own ticket to freedom. [ Music ] >> I go to sleep each and every night and I meet myself in the morning [inaudible]. >> Right now most of all it's [inaudible] taught me right from wrong. >> Dear Momma, you [inaudible] from a boy to a man. How I stood up for myself and I never ever ran. [ Music ] >> I don't know how we are on time, but just to report William and Jose are doing wonderfully. That video -- I look a little younger in that video. Couple years old. They're master carpenter and Jose is a mechanic for RV's, the only one on the East Coast if you have an RV trip -- one of those huge buses. He's pretty amazing. Another thing we do is we collect their poetry and we publish literary journals. This is our newest one, The Untold Story of the Real Me. And we have write nights where we have the poems printed out and community members and provide feedback on the poems and then we mail it -- bring it in to the young men and it creates a connection to the community and changes perceptions. So, thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. We're making executive decisions as we go. I think what we'll do is change the schedule a little and have three more and then take a five minute break and then come back and do the other four, five, or six depending on how many we have. And then take another five minute break because actually these are wonderful, but they're intense. And they change subjects rapidly and I think we all need a little time to absorb what we're seeing and think about it a little bit in view of the discussion that's coming up. So, we will now have, I believe, speaker number four. And that's Sapargul Mirseitova from The Kazakhstan Reading Association -- Reading Association, yes. Thank you very much. Sapargul. Give her a hand. [ Applause ] >> Actually we started earlier in 1997. It was in the international program, Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking, which brought us together. And on the initiative of the first participants, we established Kazakhstan Reading Association in 2002. The aim was to engulf our teachers more in leadership and problem solving. So, here you see that we have legal entities in each regional center. So, for teachers all over the country to be -- to be easier to get support from our trainers in these centers. The next one. So, what is KazRA in numbers today? More than 40,000 teachers are certified by the Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking program. Each year we have about 3,000 members not considering that many of our teachers defended doctoral dissertations, they got career promotions, and higher teaching categories. And what is the focus of KazRA? Each year we have national and regional conferences. And this year we had the 15th national conference on reading. Teacher research different vision on July 2015 in Western Part of Kazakhstan [inaudible]. So, we moved from one part of the country to another to have our national conference to involve more teachers to give them chance to participate if they cannot travel longer distances. Next one. We also publish -- and this is our issue of quarterly journal, Voice and Vision. It is a professional journal of teachers. And very popular among teachers in the country. So, and also we publish books and 16 titles of books were published so far. And they are in two languages in Kazakh and Russian. So, and each year at the national conference one evening is devoted to the auction. Money collected from the auction, we use for KazRA awards. Teachers bring souvenirs and drawings from their students. So, we try to use all of these at these auctions. So, we have the best KazRA reader of the year, the best KazRA writer of the year, and the best KazRA illustrator of the year. So, this is our Executive Director and she is together with the winner as the best writer in 2015. And this is the best reader with her teacher. And she's also the KazRA trainer. Thanks. These are students, the best writer and the best illustrator with their teacher also a KazRA trainer. So, I would like to read what they wrote for our quarterly journal, Voice and Vision. Some of these winners. "I became a winner of many contests this year, but I have enjoyed none of them except this one because here I was doing not what I had been told to do, but what I wanted myself and felt how it should be." Camilla Kulmaganbetova, grade eight. Thanks. The best writer. "First, I've got confused because there are so many talented students around. Then I realized it might be that my work worthies to be valued. I became proud of myself. Though, what is pride? Today you may have it, tomorrow not. Therefore, need to continue writing." I want to add that this student, Yana, she wrote a piece -- a wonderful piece of continuation of To Kill a Mockingbird. First, I just was reading and saying, "So, what is it? The same style. The same wording, you know? And then just different events." And so she imagined that it is 10 years past and this little girl, she came from another city, New York, is a student. University student. And she -- and her vision now after growing up about your childhood in some kind of reflection on all this. So, she is very talented. Thank you. That's it. [ Applause ] >> So, I was quicker [laughing]. >> Well, is there a question? We actually have a couple minutes. All right. Well, thank you very much. And we'll continue the discussion. Our next speaker is Charmead Schella from the Literacy Alberni Society of Canada. [ Applause ] >> You're not the first. That's all right. Thank you. Thank you. Fabulous. Oh, that's the end. But that's OK [laughing] because you know what I don't think I'm going to use it anyway. I would like to try to exercise brevity. Literacy Alberni Society is located in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island. We've actually been in the news since Sunday because there was a tragic whale watching tour boat that capsized and five tourists were killed. Anyway, that's not why I'm here but it's been shocking because I've been here since. But I would like to offer a very brief thumbnail sketch of Port Alberni. Port Alberni is tiny with a population of 18,000 people. Our illiteracy rate is a shocking 42%. People tend to be a little bit shocked when I say this as a Canadian because we are a developed country in the first world and yet our illiteracy rate is so high. So, as such, we do have a bit of a slog in Port Alberni trying to address the issues that sort of create this illiteracy rate. As such, we have a myriad of programs. I am the Executive Director at Literacy Alberni Society and we don't offer sort of one best practice. We have a myriad of things that we try to use to help. So, the first one that we use is called CALP, and it's our Community Adult Literacy Program under which fall any programming that basically addresses people who are 18 years and older. We employ methods that address computer literacy, nutritional literacy, which is like cooking classes and that kind of thing, family literacy, which is the big one. Basically monitoring for parents who perhaps had children at a very young age, which happens quite a bit in my community and such. So, the second program that's very popular at Literacy Alberni is our ESL and settlement assistance programming because we also offer a great deal of literacy support to immigrants who are new to the community. So, we offer programming at not just in terms of language acquisition but also in terms of orientation and becoming familiar with the community. As you can imagine, as a very isolated forestry based community on the very isolated West Coast of Vancouver Island, it can be a big jarring to come from metropolitan China or Iran or Pakistan or India or a myriad of other places. So, this program's very popular at our center as well. And I was delighted to meet Tom at my table who's from Little Libraries because we have just introduced the Little Library program to Port Alberni. Brand new actually in September. We've just introduced 26 Little Libraries into the community. A very very big step for the community, which seems minor, but it's actually quite large. I was marveling at the first presentation because I can relate so closely to the idea of just providing books and the accessibility to books whether that be free, whether that be lending, whatever that case is. So, a really quick story before I finish. I really don't want to speak too long. Our Little Libraries, we built 26 of them. And put them out into the community. And two of the Little Libraries went as far west as we can on the island, specifically to Ucluelet and Tofino. And we sort of thought that's where they would stop. Two of our First Nations communities out there thought that they would have a better home. So, they popped them on a fishing boat and took them very far northwest to two First Nations inaudible communities called Uchucklesaht and Opitsaht. And Opitsaht is a community of about 200 people. And our Little Library is the first library they've actually ever had. I know! So, it's a really lovely story. Anyway, we do have other programming, but I am going to stop there. And I will take any questions if there any. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Our next speaker is Danielle Verbiest from the Literacy Council of Montgomery County, Maryland. Danielle. Let's give her some encouragement. [ Applause ] >> All right. Good afternoon, everyone. So, my name is Danielle Verbiest. I'm the Executive Director of the Literacy Council here in Montgomery County, Maryland. So, we are local. We're a part of the greater DC area. Let's move -- let's see if I can navigate this. Yes! I want to start real brief by giving you an overview of the organization as a whole before I start giving you some more information about the program that we're recognized for. So, the Literacy Council Montgomery County, short MCMC, was established in 1963 initially as a one-on-one tutoring program. So, the -- the founder was Beth Kilgore and she saw a great need in our community for basic literacy services. The county grew, a lot of immigrants moved into the community, and we added ESL tutoring services to that. So, right now, just to give you a sense, we are serving about 1,600 adults every year. Since inception, we have served 18,500 adults. Most of our students are ESL students. So, they're mostly immigrants. Last year we had people from 85 plus countries represented in our student base including the United States. Most of our students are female, 75%. And we do all of this together with a vast volunteer base. We have trained and supported over 9,000 volunteers since our inception and currently we have about 650 active volunteers. Let's see. So, to give you an overview. So, as I mentioned, we have our one-on-one tutoring program. The one-on-one tutoring program is entirely volunteer based and we use a curriculum that's called the [inaudible] method. We also have intensive standards based ESL classes. Last year we did 49 classes county-wide. We also have an English for daily living program, family literacy program where we partner with local schools and we have a GED online preparation program. We have conversation classes where we offer students the opportunity to practice speaking English as they wait for a tutor or as they try to advance their skills. We also have workplace literacy classes. We have two models. The main model is where we actually work with employers. We are currently working with the Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission to offer a couple of classes to their employees. And we piloted a new program last year that is sort of a hybrid between tutoring and classroom where we actually go out to, in this case, a restaurant where we meet the students between lunch and dinner shift and provide tutoring services. And then the one that we are recognized for here today is our Health Literacy program. So, we started last year. Let's see. So, we started last year with a pilot. We got funding from the National Libraries of Medicine. We started the English for Health program. The English for Health program teaches adults to navigate the health care system and maintaining good health not only for themselves but of course also for their families. The curriculum was actually developed in Wisconsin. They were recognized for that in 2010 as a best practice. We purchased the curriculum. We made some adaptations to that for our student base, and it's been going very well. We are partnering with local community's clinics as well as a hospital. So, it's really a partnership. They help us with outreach. They provide also some presenters from the field. We do that, you know, very well in this program. We get presenters to focus on the actual practical part of going to the doctor. We have mock clinics which is one of the favorite components of this program. So, here you see some pictures. So, with this English for Health program, we directly address low health literacy rates among adults here in our community. And we also see that by bringing in the professionals from the field, it's a win-win situation because they also get to experience what it really means to communicate effectively with adults with low literacy rates. So, we, you know, of course, we are here today and we look forward to connecting with more of you here today. So, I'm joined by our Director of Programs, Christine Neil. So, if you have any questions, you know, just please come over and we'll look forward to talking to you. [ Applause ] >> I would just like to point out that thus far, this first third of our -- or first half of our presentations that we have really hit on organizations and they've come at you alphabetically as best we can figure out our score card here. And we've hit four of the five categories by chance, but it in fact they should all be here by the time we're through. But here are the five categories the way in which you are organized according to our best practices. Literacy in the service of social goals, creating a community of literacy, literacy working with government policy makers -- oops! I missed one. But we'll have to all look at our books. Another one coming up is providing access to readers with physical disabilities. And by the time we're through, we'll have examples from each of these categories of best practices. We had a discussion this morning with our advisory group about the evolving idea of best practices and how last year when we gave these awards, we had different categories. They're all related to literacy and literacy promotion, but they depend in part on the applications we get each year. This is our third year. The first year we were overwhelmed with applications. We had over 189. But it turned out that because it was our first year and various problems in working that out, a number of them didn't prove to be eligible. Most of them were, but there was a number that were not. The next two years, we've had more along the lines of 90 applications. This is both from the US and from abroad. But by and large as -- they have been better applications and fewer have been disqualified, very few. And we have still been able to widen the range of categories and change the categories, which is what we want to do in continuing this. And I'd like to point out that with this experience under your belt, I hope that you will encourage other groups to apply for the awards. We also are making an effort to reach deeper into states on the US side and the same is true really for countries. We've had a variety of countries involved. We're working hard through UNESCO and other national organizations to advertise the program. But one thing we'd like you to help us do is to encourage more groups to apply and that is a way that we think we can strengthen the overall picture of literacy and literacy promotion both in our country and especially around the world. We have been surprised, I must -- I'll conclusion my little part -- this time by the extent of international interest in the program. And it's made us realize that we need to continue to encourage it and to continue to develop some of these best practices categories that will help encourage other countries and other programs to apply for programs -- apply for awards. Well, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce our next speaker. Many of you have met in other circumstances, but it's Mr. Little Free Library himself, Todd Bol from Wisconsin. Todd, Little Free Library. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm very very honored to be here. I have to tell you a story. I was at a literacy conference in Wisconsin. We received a Literacy of the Year Award and former Governor Doyle, from Wisconsin, came up to me. And he said, "You know, what's going on in America right now is not us. We're not this polarized. We're not this separated." He said, "Little Free Library is more about what we're about." He said, "We reach across the aisle, we reach across the street, we help each other, we lift each other up. That's who we are as Americans." And when I thought about that earlier today I realized that's who we all are. What's unique about literacy and the literacy movement is we have a great we. And we have a great sense of helping everybody on a global basis, on a common goal and a common ground. And what's unique about us is we have a we without really an other. There's no villain. There's nobody on the other side. There's nobody that we're against. What we're really about is bringing together and it's a better side of our humanity. It's a better side of who we are. And I think that's what's great about us and I think that's great about everybody in this room that I'm so honored to be a part of. Little Free Library, as you instead, it says, "We all do better when we all read better." We borrowed that from Paul Wellstone, the senator of Minnesota. He said we all do better when we all do better. And we know that reading is a part of it. By the end of the year, we'll have 40,000 Little Free Libraries. We'll be in over 90 countries, 50 states, 200,000 books a day get exchanged over 60,000,000 -- 60,000,000 books a year. Yeah. I like that. It's a good start. That's my mom. Like many of you who've lost your parents, I couldn't believe she died. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. A great spirit was left. And when she died, at her funeral, I gave out a little nickels that said, "June A. Bol, a Dancing Spirit, 1927 through." And I never put an end date to it. And I consider my mom's dance to be all around the world. The spirit of my mom lives through each and every Little Free Library and every time I see one I seem like I have another child. It's great. We're all across the globe, South Korea, Israel, Japan. And we have a book, a wonderful book was written about Little Free Library. LA Times said it was almost perfect literary democracy. San Francisco Gate said, "It's one of America's better exports." I like that. Minneapolis Paper called it pint sized social justice. I like that. And last week Amazon.com, of all things -- and those of you that are in my age category will appreciate that fine complement -- it said it's the best book since the 1970s Whole Earth Catalog. It has great signs of hope and a great future for us all because it's leading really the giving and sharing economy. And how great to have that giving and sharing economy be about books. We've gotten great reviews. Pick up the book. You can find it at LittleFreeLibrary.com, at your local bookstore, and other places. Governor Doyle, again. It's -- many nice things have been said about us. We've been told that we are a global sensation, a cultural phenomenon, but what I really love is we've been called the newest micro lending system. We've also been called a revolution and neighborhood conversation and a folk art revival. I like that. And, of course, my kids groan at this one and I tell this any chance I get. We were in 50 Surprising Reasons We Love America, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, number 50, Michelle Obama, 35. Sorry, Michelle. Bill Gates, number 25. And at the heel of sliced bread -- we're not quite sliced bread -- is Little Free Libraries. All right. Just after Thanksgiving, we passed McDonalds. We're have more libraries than McDonalds, more locations than McDonalds, and of course you know we have to say more books than burgers. Probably get us sued, but I think that's brilliant. I can't wait. And our goal is by 2017 to have over 100,000 Little Free Libraries throughout the world. Our ultimate goal is to have them all around the world and serve as a lightning rod to stimulate local and grass roots literacy. And what we've developed out of this is something called Literacy-Friendly Neighborhood. And this is our key Marque program. And what Literacy-Friendly Neighborhood is designed to do is to say to neighbors, "You can't take care of your state or your country, each city, but maybe you can take care of your neighborhood." And what we've done is taken the ideas of thousands and thousands of Little Free Library stewards around the globe and put them in something called a literacy friendly neighborhood toolkit. It's something that we can all partner with, we can all use. It's a form of civil rights. It's we all have a right to read. And the neighborhoods are the key area that we have to help each other. We are doing something across the country called Kids, Community, and Cops. We're building 100 Little Free Libraries in a day. We're bringing in children. We're bringing in Black Lives Matter. We're bringing in policemen and we're putting these together. And in some communities they're asking via Facebook page, "What is your favorite book about understand? How do you build understand in your community?" And we're starting to get support from such groups as the FBI and the Treasury Department and police and corporations and so on. We plan on doing one in Washington, by the way, at the end of June. And we have one planned in Los Angeles February 20th and Minneapolis February 21st. We have up to 600 people come in and put these Little Free Libraries up and give them throughout the communities. We put in 11 Little Free Libraries in Madison area about three years ago. Now we have over 500. I put up three Little Free Libraries in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Now we have over 4,000 throughout Minnesota and it's growing faster and faster. And there's my Little Free Library vehicle. If any of you remember Felix the Cat, this is our little bag of tricks, this wagon -- I mean this trailer and we travel across the country and soon to be a city near you. Little Free Library, you can help in all kinds of ways. I was just down in Mississippi and I spoke at the library conference. And they decided that they are going to put a Little Free Library in every small town in Mississippi. There are over 11,000 towns across America without books, no library whatsoever. So, in Mississippi, they're going to make sure that they have one. I have several groups from Canada that would like to celebrate their 175th -- including that young later over there -- celebrate their 175th birthday in 2015 by putting a Little Free Library in every small town across Canada. And so we're trying to do that and I encourage each and every group here to use Little Free Library, borrow our materials, take -- go look at Literacy-Friendly Neighborhood, which can be downloaded. Take our pictures. Take our models. Do whatever you want. And use Little Free Library to help improve your community. And also come back to help us. We're interested in materials and anything you can provide us because we want to make them available for everybody. Thank you. [ Applause ] Do I have time for one question? No? I used all my time, John? >> We're in the same position we've often been in. >> Yeah. >> I'm telling you that time is up. >> But I [inaudible]. It was 33 seconds. >> You did -- well you want to give a conclusion? >> Oh. >> In a sentence or two? We've done this before. >> A gentleman came up to me and said that Little Free Libraries are like air conditioning. You know? And I said, "What?" He said, "Yeah, air conditioning. What happened to us is in the '60s we all got off the porch, stopped reading, went in the house, turned on the air conditioning, shut the door, shut the windows, turned on the TV and the digital divide began. And now with Little Free Library we're talking again." And I think we should all use that to make things better. >> Great. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> At the National Book Festival this year, Center for the Book plays a key role in the Library of Congress National Book Festival. We had a literacy corner for the first time. And Little Free Library plus a couple of our other partners were there. And a very popular part of it. And we are going to continue to have a literacy corner at the National Book Festival. And I hope that, as the years role by, that we'll be able to include more partners and more of this idea of new ways of promoting literacy, innovative ways that catch the eye and are -- go to places where there aren't books. And I didn't know the Mississippi story that Todd just told. We participated this year in the Mississippi Book Festival for the first time. People from the National Book Festival. And so we're converging I guess in Mississippi, but, again, with state Centers for the Book, there's one in every state and we talk tonight at the reception a little bit. I'll have a roster of the state centers. And I hope that that's another connection that if you haven't made, you'll consider making because we are, as Todd said, in the same business. We just come at it different ways. And the more different ways that we can approach it, the better. Next, Matt Sironas [assumed spelling], Men with a Message Braille Program. Let's give Matt a hand. [ Applause ] OK. Good afternoon. Thank you for this honor, inviting us to be here with you today. If you can read, you can learn to do anything. This is something that the Men with the Message Program strongly believes in. For the past 26 years, Delaware's Department of Corrections and the Division for the Visually Impaired's Instructional Materials and Resource Center has made it their responsibility to make written material accessible in alternate formats for the blind and severely impaired Delawareans primarily K-12 students that we serve. Each request received is unique. But there is a common goal and that is to help the student, young or old, to read and learn with the hope of them wanting more. Our program is stationed in the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware. And it's partner, the Division for the Visually Impaired in Wilmington, Delaware. Our program began in 1989 with five members and a part-time proctor that focused on producing braille. And they earned their certifications in braille transcription from the Library of Congress. The program grew and as the number of highly skilled men joining the team increased, so did the number of Library of Congress certifications awarded to these men. These certifications are not just for braille transcription but also for proof reading the braille codes in the following formats: Literary, math and science, also known as Nemeth, and music. We also developed workshops that strengthened the skill sets of our transcribers in the areas of foreign language and tactile graphics. And as the program grew further, the service of providing material in large print was added. And in later years we offered ink and braille on the same page line for line. We found that this format helped engage some of our sighted family members and their peers with the braille reader's experience with reading and learning. Historically, hard copy was the medium requested for our readers and we still provide it in that format to this day. However, with the advancements of technology and laptops, accessible portable note takers, IOS devices, as they became more readily available to students, we received more requests for reading material to be accessed on mobile devices. And so we continued to adopt new practices. No longer was it just about having the written word in large translated by our team, but by the device and actions of the end user. The trick for us, to get the hard copy print into a format that the device could understand, read out loud, and have it sent to a refreshable brain display so that the student could read the material tactually, which leads me to say accessibility is not a future, but a procedure. I'm amazed at the level of attention and care that goes to each request that we serve, the pride that the men take in their work, the proofing and the quality control measures that they have in place. We do this to insure that the reading material's not just accessible but usable so that the client can read and interpret the information the way the author intended it to be read. The participants in this program have always strived for excellence in their customer service. They rise to the occasion to perform above and beyond by learning and embracing these emerging technologies, adopting new methods and procedures, mastering new formatting codes and rules, and monitoring and training the new members of the program while focusing on the client who wants to read and learn. Our current team has 12 full-time inmate workers and their supervisor, four -- including myself -- at the Division for the Visually Impaired, and several, several hard working volunteers who have devoted their countless hours of their precious time to help clients receive their reading material. As a result of our practices, our blind and visually impaired clients have a better chance of reaching their goals because they continue to read. In closing -- I know we're short on time -- I would like to point out that all of our program, all it's accomplished could not be possible today without the pioneering efforts and accomplishments of Mrs. Anne Hitchcock who we lost earlier this year. In May of 1989, Anne began to lead this program until her retirement in 2010. We miss her dearly. And we're OK on time. Thank you very much. >> You have time. >> That's OK. If there's any questions if? Or save them for later because? >> You have a question over here. >> So, do any of the men get feedback from the target users? >> Absolutely. We have our -- we work at the Division for the Visually Impaired with the teachers or the requester and, yes, we get feedback and that's how we continue to evolve or it may be alter future volumes of the book that we're doing. >> I have a question. To what extent. >> Let me give you. Thank you. >> How does -- oh, hello -- do the inmates who receive these certifications go on to get employment once they're released and? >> We've had people in our program and, yes, we've had someone leave the program and they came to work with us to continue to serve and use those braille skills that took years to obtain. And we recently hopefully having this opportunity again. And for those who aren't there, they -- so we have some members who have been in that program for many years within that room. So, you know, we do our best and they do their best. They want to be there. We've got people in that program who've been there longer than I've -- and I've been with the agency 20 plus years, 22 years. And they're still in that room. And we've had people who have left and wanted to help serve the blind and visually impaired still. So, yes. >> How is electronic braille changing the landscape of what you do? >> When I -- what I think I'm hearing you say is that, you know, historically, like I mentioned, everything was on paper. Now, our requests are, "I want to read my book on my iPad or I want to read it on my computer." OK. We have now devices that sync up to these laptops so we have to make sure that the file that we provide, either we download it, we create it, or we have to take something from scratch, chop the spine off, and run it through our scanners and put all that together. And sometimes they want both. Sometimes they want to have something that they can read and something for their mobile device with the refreshable braille display. And it's always good because we've had summer reading times, you know, it's hot outside and those batteries tend to fail. So, we have some kids who have the hard copy right there in case the device is low on batteries. But with all this, our guys in this maximum security prison, they're not -- these computers are not on the internet. They are standalone. It's difficult for us to get things in there. The trainings that Anne, my colleague over here, and I help provide them with, the materials that we give them, it is a tough battle, but you know the guys are really embracing this. It helps keep them in touch with what's going on outside those walls. It gives them an idea of the kinds of material that's now being taught. You know, math isn't what it used to be. And it's -- they're learning themselves too and they're having a really -- it's amazing seeing the interest no matter what age. I've got some braillist in there that are -- that are seasoned. And we brought in some devices. This is how your books are being read. We have to learn new ways of making them. So, they're following new recipes, they're embracing them. We're happy with that. But it's a lot of work. Anymore? OK. Well on time? [ Applause ] Thank you. >> Well, it's a wide word that we inhibit isn't it? Next speaker is Shanti Shovashanka [assumed spelling] National Resource Center for Non-Formal Education in Nepal. Shanti? Thank you. Let's give her a hand. [ Applause ] >> Good afternoon, everyone. Namaste. I don't have any PowerPoint presentation. I'm just sharing my feeling and give a brief introduction of our program. I -- it's great to be here in Washington, D.C., United States of America. Such a big country from Nepal, such a small country [laughing]. And representing our organization, National Resource Center for Non-Formal Education, NRC-NFE. It's a great pleasure for me, my friend Sheila, and for our organization to participate in this awards ceremony. And I would like to express heartfelt thanks to the Library of Congress on behalf of our organization for providing us this opportunity to deliver my remarks and share our experience. Really, it's a great honor for us to be selected as one of the best practices honorees for the 2015 Library of Congress Literacy Awards. This has been very encouraging reward for us. We are very grateful to the Library of Congress for recognizing our effort in the field of promoting literacy and non-formal education through community learning centers. Now, I would like to briefly share about our programs. NRC-NFE, our organization, has been working for the literacy and non-formal education through community learning centers since its establishment in 1995. Our major theme of the program is to promote community learning centers at a delivery mechanism of literacy and non-formal education programs at grass roots levels. CLC means community learning centers, is a community based organization managed and operated by the community people for the community people. It is a multipurpose organization which plans and implements different education as well as other need based programs for the benefit of different target groups of the community. And it is continuously providing learning opportunities for the community people. Realizing the value of the CLCs for literacy promotion and community development at grass roots level, CLC has become the national program in Nepal and there are 2,151 CLCs running in the country at present. Main function of our organization in promoting Community Learning Center and literacy is to work as technical backstopping which includes activities like advocacy, [inaudible] building training programs, developing teaching learning materials and resource materials, and design and implementing various kinds of need based education and other programs for the communities. We have been providing financial support for various kinds of literacy and non-formal education programs for various target groups. For example, basic literacy, post-literacy, vocational skill based literacy, environmentally literacy, maternal and child health literacy, computer literacy, English language, and many more skill based training programs for youth and adults and for out of school children and school dropout children. We have open school programs and particularly, for literacy promotion in the country, NRC-NFE has been supporting the government literacy campaign programs since 2008. Its major role in the government initiation was developing textbook and supplementary materials based on learning achievement indicators defined and supporting in the facilitators training programs -- I mean teachers training programs. Thousands of copies of textbooks in Nepali language and other local languages were printed and distributed nationwide. It also encouraged the CLCs to work as likely implementing partner for the Literate Nepal Mission, that is literacy campaign. Ninety percent of the target has been achieved in [inaudible] so far. Additionally, we have been helping to strengthen the CLCs and promoting them to develop as lifelong learning center with some as green sustainable centers. We have deviled some CLCs as mobile CLCs and developed them as green sustainable centers. This way our organization has been working hard to promote literacy, non-formal education, continuing education through Community Learning Centers. And for this it is working very closely with the Ministry of Education particularly Non-Formal Education Center and we feel that we are successfully heading to our mission. To our mission we have been supported by our particular donor, National Federation of UNESCO Associations in Japan, NFUAJ, since 2002. So, great thanks to NFUAJ for providing continuous support for the CLC project and also for encouraging us to apply for this International Literacy Award and sending reference letter. Our effort has been possible with the support of NFUAJ [laughing]. We are thankful to our organization and our boss [laughing] for sending us to participate in this event [laughing]. I believe this would be a good learning opportunity for us. Lastly, I would like to thank Mr. John Y. Cole, Chair of the 2015 Library of Congress Literacy Award and Director of Center of Book and Miss Jillian for providing all the required help in the way for [inaudible] this event so far. So, today, 27th, October 2015 would be a very special and memorable day for me, for my friend, and for our organization. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Well, thank you for those nice words. And I must say I thank everyone here for agreeing to -- several of you -- to make the trip and it's been touch and go for several of you to get here. I know that. But on every effort, I mean you've made the effort and I think your presence is already making a huge difference. Our next speaker is Karen Hart from Picturebooks from South Africa, while I'm speaking of people who've made the trip. Let's give her a hand. [ Applause ] >> So, again, I'm going to say thank you for the opportunity for being here. It took me 18 hours to get all the way to Washington, D.C. and it is an honor. I'm sending photos back as I'm going along with my family that's at home that's really supported this project. And me being here today. So, we had to do for the Deaf community in South Africa what books couldn't do. Books are extraordinary things, but if you are a person that doesn't have any language, a book cannot tell you the story. All you can do is imagine what is happening in the pictures and make up your own if you have language. In South Africa, like many other developing countries, we have a problem with most of our -- sorry -- most of our students get exposure to language the very first time when they're walk in to school with our grade one. This means that our teachers are sitting with students that have never had any exposure to language. And our government expects our students to follow exactly the same curriculum as our hearing students do. But these are students that have no language. So, my journey became a journey that involved many more people and it was something that was extremely unexpected for me. I created this small application and went and visited my local Deaf school knowing absolutely nothing about sign language and knowing that I know nothing, I went to the people that I thought would be able to help me and explain how all of this worked. Because I found out in South Africa, our sign language was founded by British Sign Language, South African Sign Language, English Sign Language and in our other 11 official languages. And it was like a tower that was falling over and no support for our community. So, we had to go further and see what we could do to create for our Deaf community to learn the best way that they could. And we saw that a book was not going to do that. A paper book wasn't going to do that. But a digital book can because in a digital book, we can replace pictures with animations. And we can replace arrows of how sign language would work, with actual videos. So, we could show students what it really looks like. Just a simple thing, the sign for J is this. If you don't understand what that arrow means when you look at that little image, you could get the letter wrong. That's just a letter. That's just the alphabet. We haven't even thought of words and expressing ourselves with sign language. So, we had to look at another way of presenting all of this. And we ended up with using iPads. And in a developing countries, this was a stretch. Everybody said, "IPads? They're so expensive! How can you do that?" And we sad, well, we need the absolute best device that we can because we cannot afford for this project to fail. We cannot afford to worry about the device that's not going to achieve the goal that we have to because we have one shot. And we started knocking on doors and we initially only got funding for creating apps. We didn't have iPads and we took the stance, if we build it, they will come [laughing]. And we created our first two apps without having iPads in the school and me having three lone iPads that I would rent to the school and test and see if it was working if we presented it the best way. And I've got a lot of statistics that I put in my keynote presentation that I can quickly skip through. I mean I'll show you what we built. But before I skip through to what we've built, I just want to mention a couple of things. Ninety percent of our Deaf kids cannot speak to their parents. This means that these children spend their whole lives living in a very, very small world. And when they do get to our schools, they get exposure to sign language but they also don't get any exposure when they go home again. So, that language is only spoken in school time or while they're in session. Because most students stay in hostiles. So, there's very little reinforcement at home with sign language as well. We don't have parental involvement because a lot of our parents are uneducated themselves. So, the only source of sign language is at the school. I'm going to skip through to show you what we've built. This is just a quote that I fond and I think a lot of people think that people who are Deaf, "they've got eyes, they can read, they can write." but have you ever thought of just the sound of A. It can be an A. It can be an R. And we've been exposed to those sounds in utero. We start hearing when we are 26 weeks in utero. We get exposure to our mom's voice and language develops from there onwards. For a Deaf child, they never get that exposure to the auditory element of sound. And we forget how important sound and languages and the auditory part of that to reading, to understand how to read. You have to hear it to know what it sounds like to be able to read it. So, when I started my journey, I was one of those people. I had no idea. I didn't know that Deaf people couldn't read and write. I thought we're quickly going to create an app, I'm going to put it on the app store and I'm going to move on and create my other books. But the school entrapped me, they entrapped my heart. And they've created a space where I think I can do my life's work. These are some of the students at Transylvania School for the Deaf. They are the most spirited people I've ever seen. And don't ever think that a Deaf school is a silent place. These children have got joy and laughter and exuberance and you can see it in them playing outside. These are one of my grade four students that we tested the books on. So, initially when we started out with the books, we created books for grade four and five students. And my daughter who's hearing was grade one at the time. And we were testing that with her reading levels to see where we were on the scale of grade one, grade four, between the reading and -- between the hearing and non-hearing students. And these students were struggling with a grade one level book. So much so that they had almost no comprehension of what they were reading if we gave them a paper book. But then we created these apps. I can skip through all of this. You'll see this is the first time they had exposure to the iPads. I literally went in with 30 iPads that we put down in front of them and they had never seen the books before, they'd never seen an iPad before. And we showed them where the home button was and we opened the apps and they started exploring. So much so that they found things that I didn't think they would find. They found things like pinching in and pinching out [laughing]. And I should have known because these kids are gesture based. You know? They're going to use their hands. They're going to use their skills to communicate and find things. This is the book that we created. And you'll see that the book is in my home language on the left side, in Afrikaans. And then on this side it is in English and that is accompanied by South African Sign Language. So, this is a trilingual book that we have created. We had to start with Afrikaans because the school initially was only Afrikaans and used Afrikaans based sign language. But then South African Sign Language became recognized by the government and we had to transition from Afrikaans based sign language to English and South African Sign Language. So, we created the books in both of the languages for the older students and the new younger students. So, I'm going to just play. >> The Big Carrot. >> And that's me [laughing]. My person that was supposed to narrate got lost and couldn't come to the day of the recording so I had to do it. And, but we started out by creating a picture -- with animation introduction of the characters. >> The farmer. The farmer's wife. >> You can just make it a little bit -- ? >> They work very hard. >> And then over here the sign language interpreter is telling the story in sign language, which is a completely different syntax to English syntax. And the student can go back to that and keep rewatching it as they go along. Those words, you'll see are highlighted and if you touch them, it shows you both the sign plus the object or the person or the action plus the word underneath it, plus the finger spelling which is Deaf ABCs. And we found that this was the most effective way to make that link between English and sing language and create that bilingual environment for students to see all of the elements at once and being able to go back to it as many times as they needed. We couldn't have this on an autoplay where you could just start and play through because that's what's happening with their reading. It's autoplay. They'll read through it, but there's no comprehension. By presenting it in this way, students could go at their own pace and they could work through the book and really absorb both the sign language as well as the finger spelling as well as the text spelling. And then make that connection between the English syntax and the sign language syntax. Just a simple example, we would say, "The man is walking in the street." In sign language they would say, "Man street walk." So, when we have words in there like "the" and "and" and "Up" and "wow!" and "oops!" those aren't words that really exist in sign language and when they see those things, they get stuck and they don't want to read because it's difficult because they don't understand what it means. And they don't understand what context that word is used in. So, we had to place all of that in context with a parallel of sign language, with a parallel of English next to it. So, those were the books that we created. I'm proud to say that we created this with a very, very small team. We've had over 18,000 downloads all over the world actually. I'm surprised. We've got some in Kazakhstan, Russia, Bermuda, Jamaica, Australia. It's everywhere. And we've had a lot of interest from the Pakistan government, the New Zealand Ministry for the Deaf to create more books because this platform that we've created, we can just slot in the different sign language and use the stories that we've already created and just put different text in and different sign language videos. And the students all over the world can get access to it. So, this is our little iDeaf project that started just as I couldn't walk away because these students needed help. Thank you so much for this opportunity. I don't know if I have the time. [ Applause ] >> You've used your time. >> Thank you so much. >> So much of this hits home in the word that we do in the Center for the Book as you can imagine. We have two networks. We have a network that includes all of the states of the United States. These are reading and literacy promoters that have come together often in the state library but also in other organizations to help us do our work of stimulating public interest in books, reading, literacy, and libraries. But our second network is of organizations, non-profit organizations, that already are involved in this work. And it changes frequently project by project. It isn't quite -- the state Centers for the Book have to apply to renew every three years to make certain that we can keep an eye on how they're using the Library of Congress's name. This is what the Library tells me so I keep an eye on them. And -- but we do good work together. But one of our groups that we worked with before came to visit us yesterday quite coincidentally with Karen's presentation and it's the Literary Society for the Deaf. And it's an organization that started with Gallaudet in Washington, D.C. and they have regrouped. And we lost them for a little while and -- but we've agreed to do a project -- I mean a program with them next April. And so that's one of the things I'd like to talk to you and to Karen and to others about because it's what makes, you know, actually this category quite real. When you see the people who are doing the work and you suddenly see a way that one of us, you know, can move in a new direction. And so this is the kind of goal I think that overall that we should all be thinking about as we learn about each other's programs. Our next speaker is Zev Lowe from Worldreader which is based in Barcelona, Spain. Zev. Let's urge him on. [ Applause ] >> Thanks so much, John. I'm so honored to be here among all of you. I also just flew here from Barcelona yesterday, but not quite as far away as South Africa. So, really quickly, Worldreader's mission is to provide every child and her family, particularly in the global south, with the books that they need in order to improve their lives. And we work digitally. Since I think we're hardly alone here in believing that it all starts with a book, so that's what I want to talk about first. We've curated a large library focused on the global south, which for us at the moment we're focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and soon we're moving into India as well. But our Global Library has more than 28,000 book titles in 44 languages. And here are just some examples of the book titles. These are sort of grown up general sort of literary books. There are also a lot of children's books. My favorite one here is Wimbo Wa Matatu The Matatu Song. Matatu's are mini buses in Kenya that are their public transportation. And this is actually a bilingual book that has a song that goes along with it, which I like quite a bit. Our books also include textbooks and, as you can see, these are not exactly textbooks that you would find here in the United States. But for our readers they're the textbooks that are most useful and immediate to them. And, yeah, more sort of general fiction for adults as well as some books about STEM. So, you know, we love books. And we want to make these available to as many people as possible. And so, we work digitally primarily in two different ways. We have programs that are schools and libraries using eReaders like the Kindle, which in the five years that we have been in existence have come down in price pretty dramatically. And cell phones. Turns out that 80% of the world's population has access to cell phones. The Gate's Foundation says that more people have access to cell phones than have access to toothbrushes. So, cell phones really are absolutely everywhere. And we make our books available through basic sort of future phones like those old Nokia brick phones. And so here's a picture of one of our schools that is using our sort of eReader program. In these programs, we don't just provide the digital books. We also provide teacher training. We provide periodic assessments and we encourage the schools in the training and launch phase to make sure that they are setting aside time and creating community engagement and basically insuring that children will have safe spaces in which they can read and spend what we call time on task reading. On cell phones, this is a particularly nice picture just because it shows one of our cell phone users reading. When the whole -- and you'll see that the books that are popping up for that particular reader have to do with Ebola. One of the things that we didn't realize was by making a giant library of books available in the palm of people's hands, health would actually be one of the most sort of sought after categories of books. We see this among teenage girls in Kenya who all flock toward reproductive health books. And we saw this in particular during the Ebola crisis in Liberia where in a three month period, we saw our users triple in Liberia. We started to put up -- we just digitized sort of CDC, WHO materials, anything that we could get out there, about how Ebola really spreads. You know, in what cases you might actually be at risk and in what cases you're not at risk. Just factual material. And in that first month 60,000 people had read those materials. So, we are still discovering the potential of this new medium ourselves. But so far we're learning quite a lot. Here's a really cool story that I just wanted to tell you. We're working right now with Kenya National Library Serves to scale up our digital reading program to every single one of their 61 libraries, 61 public libraries nationwide. Before our program, they had mobile libraries that were brought around by donkeys, which I've always thought is a really cool idea. But it turns out that it's very complicated for librarians to also manage to keep a stable of donkeys. The donkeys kept getting sick. It was really expensive to keep having to buy their feed and in addition to librarian duties, to haul donkey feed over to the donkeys and feed them -- which is not something that I actually thought about before. But it turns out donkeys are complicated. So, then they went to a different model where they had the donkey carts but they would rent the donkeys. Well, it turns out that's difficult too because donkeys tend to be busy animals and the people who own them have, you know, lots of work for them. So, you can't always get the donkeys when you need the donkeys. So, in providing the librarians with digital books, this is one of them. His name is Kelvin Guma [assumed spelling]. His entire community now refers to him as eReader, which we think is kind of funny. But he has a tote bag in which he puts, you know, 20 or 30 eReaders and then he sits on the back of a motorcycle or actually now he's got his own scooter, and goes out into rural communities and does mobile library outreach programs in little huts like these as well as in tents sometimes as well. So, no more donkeys. Sorry, donkeys. This is a quote from UNESCO. They released a report last year called Reading in the Mobile Era, which was really sort of a groundbreaking study that they did about mobile reading through programs like ours. And what they said was, "If every person on the planet understood that his or her mobile phone could be transformed, easily and cheaply, into a library brimming with books, access to text would cease to be such a daunting hurdle to literacy. An estimated 6.8 billion people would have access to books." So, that's the quote that I want to leave you with. And I can't really tell you about our work nearly as well as one of our library users can and since we're in the Library of Congress, I thought it would only be fitting to show you this really quick video of one of our users. >> Better kind of life I was [inaudible]. But because [inaudible] it's changed my mind and today I'm here. I came from a poor family. We couldn't afford the basics [inaudible] even a lot of things. I didn't have my own school. All of us [inaudible] shoes. We would share only one or two books once in a while. I lost my dad. I lost my mom. They had died of AIDs [inaudible] yes. I came to learn that I had only one option in life [inaudible] digital. That was one option. Reading [inaudible]. I would read for hours [inaudible] sense of understanding about life [inaudible]. I was able to go to the [inaudible]. And my teacher [inaudible]. Even much more than I was [inaudible] more information. The first time I had [inaudible] that was my first encounter with the eReader and [inaudible]. [Inaudible] a lot of material that I couldn't find on the shelf. Even in the [inaudible]. To [inaudible] in the house, I read it. As [inaudible] I passed the safety information [inaudible] the school. I'm very, very, very much excited for students to use eReaders. eReaders [inaudible] access and a lot more books than they have ever seen [inaudible]. I have a passion for teaching. I have a passion for [inaudible] life. And [inaudible]. [ Applause ] >> Our final speaker will be Sister Mary M. Buckley and she represents a -- is she here? A literacy education group in the Dominican Republic and her -- I'm going to ask her to pronounce the name of her organization as it should be pronounced rather than the way I would pronounce it. Please, Sister. Let's give her a hand. [ Applause ] >> I'm speaking for the Escuela Santo Nino Jesus de Fe y Alegria in Santo Domingo of the Dominican Republic. And I'm very very happy to be here and I thank the Library of Congress for this opportunity. Actually, I'm standing in for someone else who was standing in for someone in the Dominican Republic. So, I'm a very last minute add-on. But it was really important to me that one of us be here because I feel as if it's an opportunity to speak for some children who are both invisible and voiceless. And these are Haitian children living in the Dominican Republic. Ours in particular are in Santo Domingo in what's called a Batey. A Batey is like a Haitian ghetto. Originally Haitians came to work in the sugarcane plantations. And when they were taken over by the government, the Haitian lost their job and they couldn't return to Haiti nor were they accepted into Dominican society. So, they really were just left to be forgotten in these Batey situations. Ours is called the Batey Laturia [assumed spelling]. I am a Catholic sister, a member of an international community called the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. And about 25 years ago, a few of our sisters went to Santo Domingo and they looked around to see what needed to be done and they were drawn to the Haitians in this Batey. And it all started with a container. You know, one of those big container -- structures. And that became a library. And little by little they began to engage the children in learning to read and trying to do something also with the parents. Now, these are the poorest of the poor and they have so many things working against them. So, it was a pretty up-hill situation. But the container then gradually became a school, Holy Child Montessori School. That's Escuela Santo Nino Jesus in Spanish. And the Montessori school now has about two, maybe three buildings at this point and about 450 children. The children come at the age of three and they move on into the public school system probably at the end of 4th grade. And the idea of the Montessori school is to give the children the training, the literacy, the discipline, all that they need in order to be able to succeed in the public schools. So, it really -- it's working. As I said, it's up hill. It's very hard work. It also entails working with the families. In fact, just last year, two of our sisters from Nigeria went to the Dominican Republic, learned enough Spanish to function -- they're still working at that -- but they now are working with the women in the Batey. And part of that work will be literacy education. So, it's a wonderful work. The needs are enormous. It's growing. It also entails training teachers, which is a rather aspect of the whole endeavor. Our community is about 165 years old and we have a long tradition of education, education of children and of adults. So, teacher training is in our blood. And our sisters there have really been working at training the Dominican people to be effective teachers in this Batey situation. So, from a container to a Montessori school, to teacher education, to further work then with the adults in the Batey. That's been the trajectory over these 25 years. And that's us. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.