Literations
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| Founded | 1991 |
|---|---|
| Type | Intergenerational |
| Location | |
| Website | Generations Incorporated |
Generations Incorporated, founded in 1991, is a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts. As an intergenerational literacy organization, that strives to ensure students have a strong literacy foundation by first grade, and are reading proficiently by the end of third grade. It aligns itself with the ongoing effort in Boston and Revere public schools to ensure more elementary students are grade level proficient by the time they enter fourth grade. They place a very strong emphasis on early literacy, the basic foundation that children need to develop in kindergarten and first grade. And they do their work by engaging talented older adults (age 50+) - from the communities they serve - as volunteer literacy tutors and mentors.
History
Generations Incorporated was founded in 1991 as Magic Me, which brought school children to local nursing homes to develop relationships with residents.
In the late 1990s, the organization shifted its focus to incorporate children's literacy and changed its name to Generations Incorporated, after its Executive Director, Mary Gunn, began to engage healthy, active older adults as tutors and mentors. By 2002, Generations Incorporated had 40 volunteers helping nearly 500 children in public schools and Boys and Girls Clubs in the Greater Boston area. The organization was then selected as one of five sites for the expansion of national AARP Experience Corps program (formerly called Experience Corps). It is now Greater Boston's host to AARP Experience Corps and one of the premiere intergenerational organizations in the USA.
Programs
The organization has three distinct programs:
- Reading Coaches: Brings teams of volunteers to school and after-school programs to provide one-on-one mentoring instruction outside of the classroom. Throughout the school year, students and volunteers meet twice each week for 45 minute sessions. Each session follows a specific, proven model and standard literacy curriculum which focuses on boosting student vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension.
- Classroom Literacy: Brings volunteers into elementary school classrooms to work one-on-one or with small groups (2-4 students), providing 5–10 hours of literacy support each week, depending on the grade. Volunteers reinforce teacher instruction and reduce the average teacher to student ratio from 1:22 to 1:11. In kindergarten classrooms beginning spring 2013, volunteers will assist with the launch the new BPS Kindergarten Story Circle Initiative.
- Active Aging: Offers year-round activities provide meaningful activities that increase physical and mental health while at the same time providing opportunities for the volunteers to connect to one another outside of their volunteer time with children. They include, walking groups, knitting and crafting classes, coffee clubs, and book clubs on a weekly or bi-weekly basis as well as evidenced-based model-programs like Healthy Eating for Successful Living in Older Adults, A Matter of Balance (a fall prevention class) and Chronic Disease Self-Management. Activities take place in the communities in which volunteers serve.
As part of its evaluation protocol, Generations Incorporated tests students using the Basic Reading Inventory (BRI), a tool which was created by Dr. Jerry L. Johns, a former president of the International Reading Association, to measure student progress. While the BRI is not directly equivalent to a child’s grade level, Dr. Johns states that “an instructional reading level estimates the difficulty of the text materials that a student is able to read. If, for example, a student has a third grade instructional reading level, he or she should be able to be successful with grade 3 materials.”[citation needed] Generations Incorporated tests students at the beginning and the end of the school year to monitor reading progress.
Generations Incorporated issues pre- and post- teacher and volunteer surveys and conducts site visits to measure the impact and determine areas for improvement for its Classroom Literacy program.
For their Active Aging program, they are currently working on developing a more effective evaluation tool. Currently, they issue surveys to participating volunteers.
Organization Growth
Since 1999, Generations Incorporated has held a strategic partnership with the national Experience Corps Program, an innovative, intensive literacy support program that pairs trained retired tutors with struggling readers. Through expansion funding provided by Experience Corps, Generations Incorporated recently completed a 4-year expansion, growing its volunteer base from 42 older adults to 300. In the same period, Generations Incorporated grew from serving 500 children to 3,400.
Currently 250 Generations Incorporated volunteers are in service in 13 Boston Public Schools and 4 after school programs in the target communities of East Boston, Mattapan, Roxbury, Dorchester, South End, and South Boston as well as Revere. In 2013 they will reach 3,000 kindergarten through third grade students and will contribute over 60,000 hours of service.
In November 2012, Generations Incorporated completed a rigorous, six-month strategic planning process with The Bridgespan Group, funded by the Barr Foundation. This process resulted in a three-year Read to Succeed improvement plan. In 2010, Executive Director Mary Gunn was invited to speak to an audience of more than 600 at TEDxBoston, giving a presentation on the benefits of inter-generational programming. In 2010, Generations Incorporated was recognized as a "Social Innovator" by Root Cause, for our promising solutions to Greater Boston’s pressing social problems. In 2009, a rigorous study of our literacy intervention by Washington University found that participating students showed 60% improvements in their reading skills over students who did not receive our intervention, while older adults showed statistically significant decreases in depressive symptoms and functional limitations that peers who were volunteering through our program. In 2006 Generations Incorporated was designated as an approved provider of Supplemental Educational Services (SES). SES is available for students in schools which receive Title I funding but have not met or exceeded the goals for Adequate Yearly Progress.
In 2005 Generations Incorporated was named Massachusetts' Community Champion by Citizens Bank and New England Cable News (NECN). Citizens Bank and NECN recognized Generations Incorporated for increasing the reading levels of each child it served by 2.7 reading levels, for being selected for expansion funding by the national AARP Experience Corps program, for delivering its programs to a total of 15 sites within [Dorchester], [Roxbury], and [South Boston], and, says Citizens Financial Group, for "serving as an innovative literacy model throughout the nation."[1]