Library of Congress Announces Winners
of the 2020 Literacy Awards
Five organizations working to expand literacy and promote reading
will be awarded the 2020 Library of Congress Literacy Awards, Librarian of
Congress Carla Hayden announced today.
Top prizes are being awarded to The Immigrant Learning Center, The
International Rescue Committee, Inc. – Pakistan Reading Project, the National
Center for Families Learning, Pratham Books and Room to Read.
The Literacy Awards, originated by David M. Rubenstein in 2013,
honor organizations doing exemplary, innovative and replicable work.
Collectively, all of these awards spotlight the great efforts underway to
promote literacy and respond to the needs of our time.
Three of this year’s winners are being recognized for a second
time due to their responsiveness to the unique needs presented by the current,
unprecedented times. They have done especially outstanding work addressing
challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic and recent social unrest. Only the previous major award recipients
(2013-2019) were eligible to apply for these three awards.
“Literacy powers the pursuit of learning, knowledge and
opportunity around the world, and now we are challenged to find new ways to
teach and learn due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Librarian of Congress Carla
Hayden. “The Library of Congress is proud to work with David Rubenstein in
honoring the innovative achievements of these organizations in advancing
reading in the United States and worldwide.”
Prizes and Recipients
American Prize ($50,000):
addresses the needs of low-income immigrants and refugee adults in
the greater Boston area. Begun in 1992, the center serves 425 students at any
given time, over 800 annually, with a waitlist of 700. The center provides
English for Speakers of Other Languages classes emphasizing a range of literacy
skills (including civic and financial) along with language proficiency. They
also help immigrants learn how to navigate American educational, business and
general social systems. The center has served over 10,500 immigrants from 92
greater Boston communities since its inception. A staff of 32 credentialed and
experienced teachers teach at the center with the assistance of 60 volunteers.
Programs are year-round and free of cost to learners.
International Prize ($50,000):
supports regional and provincial education departments to improve
literacy and reading skills of public school children in grades one and two
throughout Pakistan. The three key components of the project are: teacher
training and development of materials for students and their educators in local
languages; policy reform (such as introducing policies that support reading);
and community-based support for reading. This is a 7-year project (started in
2013) working in 69 districts. As of December 2019, the project’s services had
reached more than 1.7 million students and trained more than 27,000 teachers in
reading instruction.
2020 David M. Rubenstein Special Response Awards ($50,000 each):
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works to eliminate poverty through educational solutions for
families. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the center has focused on the digital
divide by partnering with school districts and other community-based
organizations to provide technology and Wi-Fi access, including mobile bus
hotspots. The organization has also addressed issues such as food insecurity
and social isolation. In Kentucky, Texas and Colorado, the center packaged and
delivered food bundles with backpacks full of engaging educational books and
materials to families. In Louisville, Kentucky, the organization’s hometown, it
partnered with a local nonprofit to produce public service announcements about
the virus that feature families as trusted community messengers. The center’s
hometown of Louisville has been at the forefront of social unrest due to the
fatal shootings of Breonna Taylor and David McAtee. They have condemned these acts of violence
and are taking actionable steps to use their platforms for social justice.
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Established in 2004, Pratham Books is a children’s book publisher
that has helped millions of children gain access to engaging, affordable books
in multiple languages. To further its mission, Pratham Books launched StoryWeaver, an online, digital repository of
multilingual children’s stories that are openly licensed, giving users free
access to the stories. The platform also enables the creation, translation,
downloading and printing of stories through embedded tools. The repository has
over 23,000 stories in 259 languages and continues to grow.
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seeks to transform the lives of millions of children in low-income
communities by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education. Room to
Read’s digital platform — Literacy Cloud— originally developed for educators
and book creators in Indonesia, was expanded exponentially in response to
COVID-19. It now includes over 1,000 original Room to Read children’s book
titles in 19 languages. The titles are available as a free resource for
students, parents and teachers in the U.S. and around the world.
The Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program is also honoring
15 additional organizations for their implementation of best practices in
literacy promotion
These best practice honorees, recipients of $5,000 each,
are:
Based on 7 readability formulas:
Grade Level: 13
Reading Level: difficult to read.
Reader's Age: 18-19 yrs. old
(college level entry)
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