Parent Grant

          LINC was one of five recipients of the Parent Education and Outreach grant from New York State. Through the grant’s funding, LINC is turning one square mile in the Bronx’s Community School District Ten into a laboratory for enhancing parental involvement in their children’s early language learning and school activities.
          Many of LINC’s community-based literacy programs include parental involvement as an integral component, and the Bronx grant program is not only applying many of the organization’s proven approaches, but will extend them to further strengthen outreach and ongoing communication among parents, schools, and the neighborhood community. Throughout the grant period, a series of small, peer-led gatherings are being held for parents through a network of community and school sites, focusing on how parents can help their children succeed in school.
          Key to the effort is helping parents understand how they can do more at home to help their child, as well as reassuring them that they can help their child’s language development through such activities as conversation, asking questions, and looking at magazines, as well as traditional reading. The goal is to reinforce for parents the strengths they possess inside themselves, and how they – with the support of the schools and greater community – can create a positive influence on their child’s education.
          As with other LINC programs, the results of the work done under this grant from New York State will be included in the development of LINC’s model for dissemination and replication in other communities.