News Briefs & Upcoming Events

It’s Summertime Reading at the Puerto Rican Action Board!

Diane Ode and Marian Pho lead a reading session at PRAB - The program kicked off on July 14th

Research shows children lose one to three months of learning every summer. They forget math and reading skills they worked hard to acquire during the school year. Then they have to work even harder to catch up in the fall. GLP and the Puerto Rican Action Board decided to help prevent this summer learning loss with a weekly series of interactive reading sessions.

The PRAB and GLP have an ongoing partnership as part of GLP’s “Culture of Reading Campaign” where three to four times a year GLP donates a book to every student in their program as well as bringing Rutgers University students to read interactively with the students.

Teen Transforms Children’s Orphanage

Milena Lurie reading with Indian students

Milena in her own words…

“About a year ago I decided that for a community service project, I wanted to make a difference for an orphanage in Southern India. Our family friends, Lynn and her husband Evelyn, support orphanage in a village in southern india and suggested that I work on creating a library there. My mother’s other friends the Vanechs had told us about Global Literacy Project, an organisation there daughter Christina had had a good experience with service oriented work in Africa. We got in touch with them and they helped us plan out what we would do with the library. I began emailing tons of people and I started a book drive and received around 42,000 books by the end. The books were all sent to India and I visited the orphanage in early June of 2008. I read to the kids and i danced and played many games with them. They were amazing and so thrilled to be learning how to read the donated books. This year I have been working on a short documentary of my visit that I recently finished. The documentary shows tons of pictures from my trip there with all of the kids. It was a wonderful trip and I cannot wait to return this summer to work with the kids again.”

Visit with Milena at the Lady Lynn Joyful Home in this video -> milena_at_lady_lynn_orphanage

See more about Milena’s efforts in SPAN, the magazine of the American Embassy, New Delhi. http://span.state.gov/wwwhspseptoct0810.html

Also, local coverage in the Indian news… http://www.hindu.com/2008/06/16/stories/2008061659881100.htm

Students use birthdays to give ‘global’ gift

May 7, 2008.-Instead of receiving presents for their birthdays, eight sixth grade students recently decided to use the occasion to give a collective gift to the Global Literacy Project.

Camille Vanasse of Bridgewater, Drew Topor of Madison, Nikky Zezza of Greenbrook, Lizzie Abbott and Mikaele Lewis of Basking Ridge, Haley LaFontaine and Morgan Wahby of Summit, and Kyle Casey of Montclair asked their families and other Grade 6 families to make donations to GLP. To show their support, the families raised $5,000.

See story here -> http://blog.nj.com/reporter/2008/06/students_use_birthdays_to_give.html