News Release

05/16/2007
Literacy Champion Coming to Rhode Island to View Award-winning Program

RI Family Literacy Initiative at PPL, Winner of Verizon Tech Savvy Award, to Host Christie Vilsack

Former Iowa First Lady and literacy champion Christie Vilsack will be in Rhode Island on Wednesday, May 30 to meet with program coordinators and participants, as well as supporters of The Rhode Island Family Literacy Initiative (RIFLI), a public library collaboration of the Cranston, East Providence, Pawtucket and Providence Public Libraries. She will visit program classes in Providence and Cranston (at Providence Public Library’s Rochambeau Branch and Knight Memorial Library and at Cranston Public Library’s Auburn Branch). RIFLI was selected as one of five winners across the country in the inaugural Verizon Tech Savvy Awards. Named the Eastern Regional Verizon Tech Savvy Award winner, RIFLI has received a $5,000 reward to continue and expand its program.

The Verizon Tech Savvy Awards are a joint creation of National Center for Family Literacy, former First Lady of Iowa Christie Vilsack in her capacity as President of the Vilsack Foundation, and the Verizon Foundation. It is the first national award designed to provide an incentive for grassroots, community-based nonprofit organizations and schools to create programs that demystify technology for parents, enabling them to better guide their children in the use of new media. Vilsack recently created the Vilsack Foundation in an effort to continue work she began in 2000 to promote education, literacy, libraries, storytelling and community-building. One specific goal of her Foundation is to demystify technology for parents so that they can better guide their children in the use of the new media and advocate for 21st Century skill in schools.

“To accomplish this I am collaborating with the Verizon Foundation and the National Center for Family Literacy,” says Vilsack on her Web site. “Together we want to identify and recognize media and information literacy programs around the country that focus on parents…and have created the national Tech Savvy Award to recognize best practices in this emerging field.” Verizon Foundation President Patrick Gaston adds, “To truly improve literacy and education for the 21st century, we need a comprehensive approach that reaches beyond the classrooms and into community programs and homes. These programs are prime examples how technology can be used to spread educational opportunities to ensure a brighter future for our communities.”

Some highlights of the RIFLI program:

• Participants learn real world skills such as creating brochures or spreadsheets to support the start of a home daycare business; or inserting digital photos into PowerPoint presentations that puts language to experiences outside the classroom.
• Parents go through “parent-teacher” conferences to help them gain the language skills needed to become advocates for their children.
• And, parents and children are given free computer time where they can work together on the computer, visit educational websites while improving computer skills and working closely with their children. This interaction sometimes leads to a situation where the child is helping to teach the parent about technology.

Details of the programs honored at the Verizon Tech Savvy Awards will be added to the Verizon Literacy Network to serve as an educational resource, highlighting best practices and approaches for technology literacy across the lifespan. Those resources can be accessed online at www.thinkfinity.org.

Thinkfinity is the Verizon Foundation’s signature digital learning platform, combining authoritative, standards-based K-12 educational content and robust professional development with research and evidence-based resources and practices for literacy across the lifespan. More information about the Vilsack Foundation can be found at: www.christievilsack.org.