Who We Are
Mission: To strengthen communities by providing quality books and literacy resources for children and their families to use at home during the earliest stages of development.
Ferst Readers of St. Johns County aims to foster early literacy by providing children under the age of five with access to books at home. The program mails age-appropriate, high-quality books to children each month to help create a literacy-rich environment that supports early brain development and school readiness. Their mission is to improve kindergarten readiness and promote a lifelong love of reading by ensuring children from all backgrounds, especially those in underserved communities, have the resources to build strong early literacy skills.
What We Do
We ensure children have developmentally appropriate books in their homes and provide parents with resources supporting them as their child’s first teacher. Children in the Ferst Readers literacy program receive a bookstore-quality, age-specific book and resources mailed to them at home every month until their fifth birthday. This access to print helps create a language-rich environment in the home.
To do this, we implement Community Action Teams, or CATs, made of dedicated volunteers who oversee and administer the program in their community. Typically, CATs are made up of a team of five to ten diverse members that work towards getting the message out, registering children, and gathering support for the program. The CATs are responsible for raising most of the necessary involvement for each child in their program.
Moreover, many participating communities focus on at-risk populations such as Early Head Start, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and low-income neighborhoods for program registration. This is often driven by limited funding in the community. As funding increases, more children are eligible for enrollment.
Details
| (904) 248-0165 | |
| info@ferstreaders.org | |
| Michelle Maddox | |
| Program Manager | |
| https://ferstreaders.org/ |
