Literacy campaign yields results
Camden childhood studies program combines scholarship and outreach
Archived article from Dec 15, 2003
By Melissa Payton
Just three years after it was founded, the Rutgers–Camden Center for Children and Childhood Studies is having a measurable impact, not only on scholarship, but also on the lives of children and families in the surrounding community.
For example, from January 2001 to September this year, the center, through its Camden Campaign for Children’s Literacy, has:
- distributed 69,177 books to children and libraries. The total includes more than 6,000 new books given to children by their physicians at each well child visit.
- signed up more than 1,000 children for free pre-school under the Abbott mandate requiring that school districts offer such programs to poor children.
- helped more than 100 child-care workers receive nationally recognized Child Development Associate certification through special training.
- referred more than 300 parents to Literacy Volunteers of America for literacy training.
At the same time, the center has promoted and encouraged research on children and overseen the undergraduate courses leading to a minor in childhood studies.
“We believe that childhood studies will be to this century what women’s studies was to the end of the last century,” said director Myra Bluebond-Langner, professor of anthropology. “What makes our center unique is our multidisciplinary emphasis and that we’ve taken on this threefold mission.”
That three-pronged approach — involving scholarship, service and outreach programs, and undergraduate courses — has helped win the center support from dozens of foundations, individuals and federal and state agencies. The John S. & James L. Knight Foundation has given the Camden literacy campaign $650,000 so far.
The center sponsors nearly a dozen outreach programs dealing with local public schools, museums, recreation and health issues, but its signature project is the Camden literacy campaign. The six initiatives within the campaign are designed to address the needs of children in Camden, 80 percent of whom live in poverty, according to Bluebond-Langner.
Angela Connor-Morris, the childhood studies center’s coordinator of service and outreach programs, directs the literacy campaign. In addition to the Prescription for Reading Program that makes sure children get a new book at each well-child doctor’s visit, the Parental Literacy Program trains nurses and physicians to refer parents with literacy problems to the Literacy Volunteers of America for help. The Library Outreach Initiative has beefed up program offerings and holdings at Camden libraries, leading to a card registration increase of 38 percent and circulation increase of 26 percent from 2001 to 2003, Bluebond-Langner said.
The Abbott Preschool Outreach and Registration Initiative was modeled after the success of Healthy Futures for Camden Youth, a program led by Dan Hart, professor of psychology and associate dean of the Rutgers-Camden College of Arts and Sciences. Five years ago, Hart started organizing young Americorps volunteers to go door to door in Camden, signing up families for NJ KidCare, the state-funded health insurance program aimed at low-income families. (The state program has since been renamed NJ Family Care.)
The Abbott Preschool program has increased local preschool enrollment by 22 percent, Bluebond-Langner said, and brought needed state funds to Camden. Meanwhile, Hart’s Healthy Futures program, which is also sponsored by CCCS, is going strong as well. Hart said the center’s ability to combine research and outreach sets it apart.
“Oftentimes at universities, these centers morph into just applied social science or into institutes that are providing service but don’t have a research component,” he said.
Not only has CCCS been able to ensure that its social service programs have a research basis, but “Myra has done a good job in making it genuinely interdisciplinary,” Hart said. “She has worked very hard to keep history, philosophy and English all involved.”
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