How LINC Works

LINC Works with communities to:

DEVELOP a dynamic and sustainable network of community activities that achieve unified literacy success.

HELP organizations, community leaders and others to understand the many ways they can support young children as readers.

ENCOURAGE families and other community members to be increasingly engaged as reading partners to young children.

CREATE a perceptible shift in the community belief that all its neighborhood children will read on time with community support.

ENSURE a literacy rich community that will contribute to the success of children entering school by ensuring that they are ready to learn and read on time.

Some of our major community stakeholders are:

  • Family Members
  • Teenagers
  • Community Leaders
  • Community-Based Organizations (CBO)
  • School Administrators
  • Teachers and Childhood Specialists
  • Volunteers
  • Faith-Based Organizations
  • Government Officials

Community Literacy Networks

LINC organizes community resources by hiring and training coordinators to work within neighborhoods and local schools. Many LINC Coordinators come from the neighborhoods in which they work, or nearby.

LINC Coordinators form Community Literacy Networks (CLNs) to engage local stakeholders in early literacy efforts. LINC Coordinators guide and support the formation of CLNs and continuously work to have these local networks become self-sustainable. Visible efforts of this work include a broad spectrum of community literacy programs, events and activities such as:

  • Reading Partner Programs—Cross-Age and Intergenerational
  • Parents Conversations
  • Books & Breakfasts
  • 100% Attendance Breakfast Celebrations
  • Teacher/Principal Breakfasts
  • Animal Days
  • Parent Book Clubs
  • Themed Read-A-Thons
  • PJ Nights
  • Family Game Nights

Every CLN works to:

  • Bring together a cross-section of neighborhood populations and services;
  • Develop and implement literacy initiatives;
  • Help to develop and facilitate community literacy;
  • Build local leadership and neighborhood capacity to stress the fundamental importance of early literacy as part of a community's future.

CLN activites are solely determined by local resources and needs. Instead of dictating a prescribed model and bringing in people from outside the neighborhood, LINC guides each CLN to be a catalyst, helping communities network more effectively to keep early literacy as a priority. It is LINC's hope that each CLN becomes deeply rooted in the neighborhood and a focus for coordinated efforts to help all children read well by grade three.

LINC's CLNs

NEW YORK CITY

Bronx
Kingsbridge Heights
University Heights
Morris Heights
Highbridge/Morrisania
North Fordham
Belmont/East Fordham
South Fordham
Melrose/Mott Haven

Brooklyn
Park Slope/Sunset Park
Bedford-Stuyvesant
Bushwick/Williamsburg
Red Hook
South Brooklyn

Upper Manhattan
Washington Heights
Inwood
Harlem

Queens
Jamaica Ave. Reading Partners (JARP)
Our World of Literacy (OWL)
UNITY
South East Queens

Staten Island
Stapleton

GREATER NEW YORK

Hudson

Mount Vernon

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