Alana's Achievers
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To provide a fun and engaging environment by working with athletes and community-based organizations to foster the love of reading while promoting literacy by preparing and motivating children to read.
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What is the primary problem your venture is trying to address and how are you addressing it (or planning to address it)?
Alana’s Achievers was created to address many problems that face children today, including childhood illiteracy and active, healthy lifestyle choices. Through Alana’s network of professionals upon whom she has made an impression, Alana's Achievers has implemented a reading program "Tra (Tra Battle of the San Diego Chargers) & Alana's Reading for Life" Literacy Program. “Tra and Alana’s Reading for Life Literacy Program” promotes literacy in schools within socio-economically distressed areas that have not met their state reading benchmarks.
By providing volunteers to assist in the classroom, this enables the teachers to redirect their focus to children who need their attention, without taking attention away from the children who need additional instruction in reading. Because Alana has first hand experience in how important reading is to her career, she chose to share her love of reading with other children that might not have access to the same tools and resources that she did. Alana has a few programs currently running in San Diego area schools, but would like to eventually have branches of “Alana’s Achievers” across the nation.
Name Your Project
Alana's Achievers
Describe Your Idea
To provide a fun and engaging environment by working with athletes and community-based organizations to foster the love of reading while promoting literacy by preparing and motivating children to read.
Innovation
Project Description
To provide a fun and engaging environment by working with athletes and community-based organizations to foster the love of reading while promoting literacy by preparing and motivating children to read.
Unique and different
(Alana was in the first class of students on the hit Fox show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader”) and her youth to be a peer advocate of reading. By leveraging her time and national exposure on “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader”, Alana has given children her own age a tangible role model for reading success. Alana has networked with other celebrities to help her in her quest to provide these children with an excitement and joy for reading. Through “Alana’s Achievers,” Alana and her friends ignite in children, who would otherwise not have access to the incentives they provide, a purpose and goal for reading.
“Alana’s Achievers” provides students mentorship at school, during actual class time. Since Alana cannot miss school herself every Tuesday, “Alana’s Achievers”
is currently in the process of creating community collaborations with local corporations such as Kohls & Wal-Mart to volunteer during the school day. This partnership will be very important to “Alana’s Achievers” to continue the goal of fostering the love of reading in other children. Alana is also recruiting other corporate sponsors and other volunteers to assist in making “Alana’s Achievers” more widespread.
Project plan
The plan for “Alana’s Achievers” is to increase the sense of urgency among school-age children to learn to read. The goal is to encourage children to read as much as they can while at school – as well as at home, to help increase each child’s Accelerated Reading level and vocabulary plus the wealth of knowledge that reading provides.
Partnerships
“Alana’s Achievers” is a part of a foundation group called “Athletes for Education.” The partnership with AFE has provided “Alana’s Achievers” access to other celebrities and that have similar foundations with similar goals. Alana partners with the athletes, bringing even more excitement to appearances. AFE’s founder Steven Haynes has been an integral supporter of Alana’s goals with her foundation. Alana is looking forward to local corporations such as Kohls & Wal-Mart coming onboard to provide employee volunteers to read to the children during the school day. ”Alana’s Achievers” has teamed up the SG Squad, another “Athletes for Education” program. SG Squad’s program has already been implemented at some of the same schools prior to the implementation of “Tra & Alana’s Reading for Life Literacy Program”, with a focus on wellness; health, exercise program & making healthy eating choices.
Impact
Impact
The kids want to stay in at recess just to read with their teacher!
Effectiveness
“Alana’s Achievers” is still in its infancy – having been incepted less than six months ago. In that short period of time, “Tra & Alana’s Reading for Life Literacy Program” has piloted a program in two schools, assisting two(2) third grade classes (around 43 students) and a 5th grade class with 28 students with more requests from other schools to launch the program at their sites.
The immediate benefits are seen in the kids, but ultimately all of society will benefit. Many of these children do not have the resources to be “good” readers and may not understand the importance of reading. By raising good readers, this generation will not have the literacy issues that plague low-income communities, like decreasing the drop out rate among high schools within these communities. Because the program focuses on “reading for life,” “Alana’s Achievers” hopes to create a well-read adult in the work-force.
How do you engage and impact the community?
The program is an outreach-based mentorship. By engaging the kids in school environments, we reach out to them in their environment – without taking them away from their other activities. While the impact to families’ time is minimal, the impact of the skills and love of reading will be a lifetime impact on the children that “Alana’s Achievers” touches.
How do you measure this impact?
The schools we work with help us in the measurement aspects, as they are in the best position to benchmark the children’s initial starting point. “Tra & Alana’s Reading for Life” uses the Accelerated Reading program in the school programs to measure the comprehension of the material. Teachers can measure the success of the effort by gauging the improvement in each child’s progress.
Obstacles
The only obstacle that could hinder “Alana’s Achievers” is financial. Alana has a spirit that will not allow obstacles or challenges to beat her. That said, it can be difficult to raise money to make the purchases needed to incentivize the children or to receive in-kind donations in today’s current economic climate. The prize money would be wonderful seed money for “Alana’s Achievers” to purchase books so each child could have a personal copy they could keep and also purchase the prizes for children who meet their goals. “Alana's Achievers” is a perfect platform for reading advocacy including helping with self-esteem issues, mentoring & through financially assisting children so they can participate in the arts, sports, etc while maintaining good citizenship.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
Financing source
(or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)
While the financial aspects of “Alana’s Achievers” are handled by AFE, we have received some small donations. A large portion of the donations we have received have been in the time that the volunteers spend to help out these children. We also have received in-kind donations for the incentives that the children are rewarded with – like tickets to local sporting events (Chargers or Padres games), restaurant gift certificates, etc.
Aside from financial sustainability, how do you plan to grow and sustain your project?
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Finance details
Currently, “Alana’s Achievers” is staffed by Alana and her mother, Patty. Alana is the driving force behind how and where activities are implemented. Patty helps her execute the plans.
“Alana’s Achievers” has partnered with AFE to leverage the organization’s community ties and expertise to achieve Alana’s goals for the program. Also, with the Kohl’s and Wal-Mart have provided access to their employees to recruit volunteers. We are currently looking for more partners to assist the program in creating readers for life.
Creative funding
In Alana’s career she has had wonderful opportunities. She has taken those opportunities and turned them into a source of funding for “Alana’s Achievers.” She recently did a project with Mediak, a company that specializes in children's music. Alana negotiated that a portion of the proceeds of music that is sold on www.alanaethridge.org will go to “Alana's Achievers.” Alana also uses her income from various acting projects to fund her efforts with “Alana’s Achievers.”
Other non finance needs
Lots of books!!! Alana asked her friend Jeff Foxworthy if he could donate one of his books for “Alana’s Achievers.” Jeff Foxworthy donated his latest book "Dirt on My Shirt" to the 3 grade classes! Alana’s wish is that every child she reads with takes home a personal copy of the book. Some of the concerns that reoccur in lower income schools are the availability of books for the children to read. One of the school libraries is grossly understocked with books due to the community in which it's located – an unfortunate by-product that directly impacts the ability for its students to be successful readers.
The Story
Motivation
Alana is a child of a single parent. Her mother has devoted herself to ensuring that Alana is the best she can be within her field. Things have been tight for the two of them, but Alana wants to help children who haven’t been given the opportunities that she has been afforded and supported through. Alana and her mom struggle like any other single-parent family, but Alana’s perseverance in wanting to help other children to be successful readers drives her. Alana’s tie to AFE has been instrumental in motivating her, as the only kid in their program (which is full of athletes!).
Awards
The rewards of being able to watch other children become successful readers is recognition enough. Alana’s modesty has kept her from wanting to submit her good works for awards.
Broader context
“Alana’s Achievers” is at the core of what youth and social change is centered on – education. Without the tools to learn about the things that interest us as children, we will fail to achieve our goals and dreams as adults. Alana’s mantra to her fellow students is “if you can dream it, you can do it” – but if you can’t dream, you can’t achieve it. By opening access to resources such as individual copies of books and incentives to develop the love of reading, the students are given the opportunity to ignite their dreams by getting glimpses of far of lands, people achieving their dreams or the challenges that they over came to reach their dreams.
Alana has worked diligently as a peer advocate for the love of reading. Because she understands what the ability to read means to her career, she knows the doors that can be opened for the students who learn to love and use the gift of reading. By being a role model to other students, Alana lights a way to what reading can achieve.
Ongoing
As Alana grows, she would like to see “Alana’s Achievers” grow as well. Reading is a life long pursuit and it doesn’t stop when you leave school. Alana has committed to using her career as a tool to help others achieve their dreams. As she develops as a young actress and young woman, she plans to expand her foundation to other communities. Ultimately, Alana would like to see chapters of “Alana’s Achievers” throughout the country. Alana is also looking at ways to expand the program to other avenues, libraries, Boys & Girls Clubs, etc.
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