Gary Winnick and Karen Winnick - Winnick Family Foundation Support For L.A.’s Ready, Set, Read! Project
The Winnick Family Foundation has made its initial grant to the Ready, Set, Read! Project of Los Angeles, which provides low-income parents in Southern California with the tools needed to read to their children. The project trains parents to use dialogic reading techniques, a proven interactive protocol of question-and-response methods that draw a child from initial descriptions of the images in a simple picture book to the accompanying words and script.
Merrily Weiss, Executive Director and Founder of the project, said: “We are grateful to welcome Karen and Gary Winnick with the Winnick Family Foundation to our growing family of contributors who fund our work in Los Angeles. The financial help we receive has a profound impact on these families and sets high expectations in each family early on for their child’s continuing academic success.”
Ready, Set, Read! project leaders first visit each preschool to conduct one-hour read-aloud workshops with parents, conducted in English and in Spanish. At the end of the session, a new children’s book is given to each parent. Since the program’s founding a decade ago, over 21,000 parents have been trained at workshops held at more than 170 school sites across Southern California.
Karen Winnick, Chair of the Winnick Family Foundation, stated: “We are delighted to support Ready, Set, Read! and the important work they do. In addition to donating libraries to preschools with few resources, they teach parents to work effectively with their children to improve reading skills. In this way, parents are enabled to stay actively involved in their children’s education.”
