OUR FOUNDER, CAROLINE JANE KNIGHT, ANNOUNCES OUR NEWEST LITERACY LIBRARIES PROJECT!

Although Jane herself never left the south of England, she would have heard stories of India from her aunt, Philadelphia Hancock, and her cousin, Eliza De Feuillide, who had been born there - not to mention her brother Francis, who would have visited India during his naval career.

For our next Literacy Libraries project, the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation is raising money to fund the participation of five public daycare centres, called Anganwadi, in Delhi, to take part in the Worldreader Read to Kids programme.

In a programme trial in 2018/19, Read to Kids resources produced the following tangible outcomes in the newly “storified” 5 pilot Anganwadi classrooms:

• Increased teacher confidence

• Increased quality teaching-learning interactions on a daily basis

• Increased student engagement and participation

• Increased vocabulary development

• Reduced student absenteeism 

• Increased enrolments as word of positive outcomes spread, especially amongst mothers, leading to…

• Enhanced community outreach with parents and caregivers who also benefited from a better understanding of the importance of storytelling and reading at home

Read to Kids India Expansion 

Thrilled with the results of the Read to Kids pilot program, India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development requested Worldreader India, along with implementation partner Society for All Round Development, to expand the Read to Kids India program into 30 of the most impoverished and underserved Anganwadi in Delhi State.  

The Jane Austen Literacy Foundation is going to contribute to this expansion.

How We Can Help 

For US$15,000 the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation and Worldreader can launch Read to Kids in five new Anganwadi centers offering:

• Life-long capacity building for facility teachers

• Effective outreach and skill-building to community families

• Teaching assets sufficient to serve the entire Anganwadi population, including tools for story-based teaching such as:

  • Reading tablets that do not require wifi and boast a built-in measurement app that captures data on learning outcomes

  • Ambience Kits to create learning-conducive environments

  • A storybook collection of children’s books offered by local, national, and international publishers in Hindi and English

  • Age-appropriate learning resources developed specifically for the Read to Kids India program recipients

  • Lesson plans, teaching guides, and activity sheets

  • A projector to enable group teaching and learning

• Joint monitoring to ensure the long-term sustainability through successful skills transfer to Anganwadi facilitation staff in preparation for program hand-off

Why Worldreader Read to Kids India?

When we select charity partners to work with and literacy programmes to support, we evaluate the values, fit and financial standards of the charity and the outcomes of the literacy programme.  We’ve studied the results, and we find the Read to Kids India program to be a proven, scalable, cost-efficient methodology for supporting early-childhood literacy development and school readiness in India’s poorest communities. We are convinced that Read to Kids India will prove invaluable in helping its recipient children and families break out of the cycle of poverty.

On a personal note, I am very excited about this campaign. My family’s connections with India have continued to the present day. My grandfather, Edward Knight III (Edward Austen Knight’s 3rd great grandson) went to India during the Second World War (he was a Major for the British Army) and my father was born in India (in a region that is now Pakistan).  I am thrilled the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation is able to support literacy in India.

How you can help

Donate to the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation before June 14 to receive an exclusive Jane Austen Literacy Foundation bookplate personalised with your name in Jane Austen’s handwriting. 

Bookplates were a traditional way of marking the ownership of books in Jane’s time – her father had his own bookplate in the books in his library.  

All donations received by midnight GMT on June 14 will be automatically entered into our competition to WIN a fabulous prize:

OWN A PIECE OF HISTORY - AN ORIGINAL DRAWING by Robert John Truscott, the sculptor of "Writing Jane" from Winchester Cathedral's Bicentenary Exhibition. SIGNED BY THE ARTIST.

The winner will be chosen at random on June 16 by Caroline Jane Knight at Chawton House. The winner will be announced on the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation Facebook page and contacted by email. 

Our donor promise

The Jane Austen Literacy Foundation is run entirely by volunteers and, as a result, 100% of the donations we receive will be used to fund the participation of five public daycare centres, called Anganwadi, in Delhi, to take part in the Worldreader Read to Kids programme.

Thank you for your support!

Caroline

 © Caroline Jane Knight - Jane Austen’s fifth great niece, Founder and Chair of the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation

Donate to receive your personalised bookplate and to be entered into our prize draw!

Image credit: Worldreader