Historic Fair Hill (Budget $488,000)
Historic Fair Hill (HFH) is an educational support and neighborhood renewal organization that formed around the restoration of the 5-acre historic Quaker burial ground located in the Fairhill section of Philadelphia. In addition to preserving the historic Quaker burial ground, Historic Fairhill acts as a collaborative partner in the revitalization of Fairhill through school partnerships for literacy, greening and community engagement events. HFH has an endowment that funds the majority of the maintenance of the burial ground.
HFH operates two literacy programs designed to address the structural deficiencies in educational opportunities for Fairhill’s children.
(1) The School Literacy Partnership Program which reopened school libraries in the four public elementary schools that serve Fairhill’s children; employs six trained school parents who serve as literacy-focused classroom assistants in K-2 classrooms, providing extra support to teachers and Spanish language interpretation to facilitate parent involvement in school life; recruits, trains, and deploys 30 community volunteers who serve as one-on-one and small group reading coaches; and, conducts workshops for parents/caregivers at their partner schools, with topics designed to support family literacy goals.
(2) The Family Literacy Program collects new and gently used books and distributes them to individual students, to families at school and community events, and through Little Free Libraries installed in the neighborhood.
In addition, HFH organizes an annual community Reading Promise Festival at the burial ground that includes a variety of literacy resources and activities and they incorporate literacy activities into weekly Family Fun Days held on the HFH grounds from April-November.
Feedback from HFH’s partnering classroom teachers reported that the literacy assistants had been extremely helpful, that they have seen improvements in the reading skills of the children who work with the assistants, and that the assistants had been very helpful with family engagement support. As a result, HFH is looking to expand the program to include classrooms at all four of our partner schools, as funds become available. For this fiscal year, HFH served 1,050 children, ages 3-9, circulated 40,000 library books, collected/gifted 3,000 books, conducted workshops serving 50 parents and welcomed 400 in total attendance at Reading Festival & Family Fun Days.