Starksboro s CCR BookWagon has achieved the popularity of an ice cream truck and the Eden Book Truck is a summer fixture at Eden Beach. Laura McHale of Our Place Drop-in Center in Bellows Falls says the CCR annual literacy fair brings reading to the street and creates a fun and supportive learning environment for families. The weekly Children s Corner Radio program on WWSR in Franklin county has attracted attention and support for the literacy goal from the local business community. Unique success stories can also be told in each of the other communities. The Creating Communities of Readers grants competition was initiated in 1996 and provides funding, forums for ideas-sharing, guidance in evaluating results, and community organizing assistance.
Communities are eligible to apply to participate for up to five years.
Three more communities, Bellows Falls, Leicester, and Lyndonville, are benefitting from a 3-year continuing commitment to intensive funding to expand their CCR projects, in a test of whether saturation resources can advance a community more fully towards literacy. These three projects will receive programming, technical, and statistical support from the Vermont Council on the Humanities, Vermont Agency of Human Services, Vermont Department of Education, and Vermont Department of Libraries, and their progress will be evaluated through the University of Vermont Department of Education. A brief description of each project appears below, with contact information for the director. For a calendar of upcoming CCR events, click here . Creating Communities of Readers is sponsored by Vermont Council on the Humanities, a private, non-profit organization affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities.