For a second year, summer 2024, five camp organizations: Better Family Life, Gene Slay's Girls & Boys Club, Unleashing Potential, Wesley House, and the Gateway Region YMCA, at 12 locations, infused an hour of literacy a day for their campers, ages five to ten. The focus was for campers to have fun with reading!  Each day included 15 minutes of reading aloud, 15 minutes of independent reading, 15 minutes of writing, and 15 minutes of literacy games. 

 

Thanks to area contributors and funders BJC, Clark-Fox Foundation, Emerson, Incarnate Word Foundation, Light a Single Candle Foundation, Nine PBS, Norman J. Stupp Foundation, and the Saigh Foundation, each camp counselor received on-site training, and a literacy kit (co-designed by the area camp programs and Turn the Page STL). The 82 kits included more than a hundred high-interest, culturally representative books, literacy games, notebooks, pencils, chalk, and a binder of local literacy resources.   Campers were pre- and post- assessed in their literacy skills.  At the beginning of summer camp, each site hosted a Family Book-A-Palooza where families picked out free books for home and get a public library card.  Local St. Louis Black Authors spoke at camps and provided free, signed copies of their books.