Dear Annette,
Apologies for this oversight. The proposed project links the University’s core values: a love of learning; creating and sharing new knowledge; embracing and celebrating diversity of people and ideas; and caring for our environment. The University is already committed to working with the local community in various ways: the PAR (Participatory Action Research) group led by Professor Sally Lloyd-Evans employs “community researchers” to lead projects that are important to them. Ongoing projects such as “Marvellous Mums” led by our Head of School, Professor Carol Fuller, also work within local communities to empower those whose voices are seldom heard. The Centre of Literacy and Multilingualism (of which I am Director) runs multilingual storytime events in different languages to reach out to multilingual families and celebrate linguistic diversity. Our work is very much in line with these projects which put local people at the heart of them, supporting parents to support their children and to build aspiration and wellbeing so that all communities in Reading can feel part of the University in some way. In the longer term, we hope that our work will contribute to widening participation when the young children (and their parents) consider Reading as a place they would like to study.
Hope this is OK – please let us know if you’d like further information.
Many thanks,
Holly
From: The Friends UoR <vrs02mt@reading.ac.uk>Sent: Friday, March 24, 2023 8:04 PMTo: Holly Joseph <h.joseph@reading.ac.uk>Cc: Daisy Powell <d.a.powell@reading.ac.uk>Subject: Re: Friends of the University 2023 grant: expression of interest
Hi Holly, thanks for this. Could you say a bit more how this links to the University rather than just being a nice thing to do. Thanks. Annette
From: Holly Joseph <h.joseph@reading.ac.uk>Sent: 24 March 2023 12:24To: The Friends UoR <vrs02mt@reading.ac.uk>Cc: Daisy Powell <d.a.powell@reading.ac.uk>Subject: Friends of the University 2023 grant: expression of interest
Dear Annette,
We’re interested in applying for the Friends of the University 2023 grant to fund a small community project in Whitley, Reading. We’d like to run a series of ten storybook reading sessions for parents and toddlers at the community centre. An important part of this would be that we would give away a copy of the book read each week to each of the eight families attending. Whitley is an area of Reading very close to the university which faces a number of challenges, including literacy difficulties and low attainment at school. We know that empowering parents to read to their children and providing books for families to take home can make a real difference to families who may not own many books or have a culture of reading for pleasure. We would therefore ask for the following funds:
- £630 for nine copies of ten high quality picture books (e.g. the Gruffalo)
- £400 to pay a storybook reader to deliver ten one-hour sessions, allowing one hour for preparation per session
We are of course happy to provide more detailed information as needed but we hope this brief description will give you a good idea of what we have in mind. Many thanks for considering this.
Best wishes,
Holly Joseph and Daisy Powell
________________________________________________________
Holly Joseph (she/her)
(pronounced: https://namedrop.io/hollyjoseph)
Professor of Language and Literacy Development
Director of the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM)
School Director of Racial Equity and Justice
Institute of Education, University of Reading, London Road Campus, 4 Redlands Road, Reading, RG1 5EX
Tel: 0118 378 2771
@drhollyjoseph