Readings Foundation announces 2018 grant recipients

The Readings Foundation has chosen 15 Victorian organisations to share in $184,692 worth of grants in 2018.

The grant recipients are:

• Ardoch Youth Foundation: $10,000 to run four writer-in-residence programs with the organisation’s partner schools in inner Melbourne, Melbourne’s West, Frankston and Dandenong.
• Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC): $14,550 to create three bilingual versions of the picture book My Two Blankets (Irena Kobald, illus by Freya Blackwood, Hardie Grant Egmont) to share with its members.
• Banksia Gardens Community Services: $20,000 for the Banksia Gardens Aiming High VCE Support Program, which offers students from disadvantaged backgrounds specialist workshops, academic and study skills training, industry-based guest speakers and excursions to aid their VCE studies.
• Brotherhood of St Laurence: $5000 to purchase three children’s books for every child who participates in their Fitzroy and North Melbourne ‘HIPPY’ programs for disadvantaged families.
• Carlton Neighbourhood Learning Centre: $8040 to expand and improve its adult literacy tutoring program, which gives adult students from disadvantaged backgrounds the opportunity to work one-on-one with trained volunteers on a weekly basis.
• Church of All Nations: $20,000 to support the Carlton Family Learning Program, which offers a supportive out-of-school learning environment for primary and secondary students.
• The Hope Prize: $10,000 to support the Brotherhood of St Laurence’s Hope Prize in its second year and its Women’s Writing Career Development Scholarships.
• Jesuit Social Services: $15,000 to help run the Flemington Homework Club, a volunteer-led tutoring program for young school students of migrant and refugee families.
• Kids Under Cover: $7000 to provide scholarships to young Victorians who were at risk of youth homelessness or whose families are struggling to meet the basic costs of schooling.
• Meadow Heights Education Centre: $14,102 to help source books, tools and culturally appropriate equipment needed by childcare educators at the centre to run English language, literacy and numeracy classes for children of migrants and refugees.
• Reading Out of Poverty: $16,000 to provide educational support services and resources for mothers with low literacy in the City of Springvale, to assist their children develop strong reading habits from birth.
• The Smith Family: $10,000 to support its national early years literacy program, Let’s Read, which promotes reading to children aged zero to five years in disadvantaged communities.
• The Stella Prize: $5000 to support Girls Write Up, the organisation’s full-day empowerment festival for teens, and to make 30% of tickets to its 2018 Melbourne events free to students from minority and/or disadvantaged backgrounds.
• The Wheeler Centre: $20,000 for the centre’s Hot Desk Fellowships.
• Wirrpanda Foundation: $10,000 for its Deadly Sista Girlz mentoring program for disadvantaged and at-risk Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander girls aged between 12 and 18 years in inner-city Melbourne schools. The program uses positive female Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander role models to support Aboriginal female students.

The recipients were chosen from 59 applications. In an announcement on its website, Readings said that this year’s recipients had a strong focus on ‘delivering literacy and education support to the most disadvantaged people in our community’.

Readings donates 10% of its profits to the Readings Foundation each year, in addition to donations from customers.

For more information, visit the Readings website here.

Category: Local news