GEORGETOWN, Del. - On Tuesday morning, the first cohort of Hispanic moms and their children graduated after completing a 10-week program at North Georgetown Elementary aimed at improving their communication and early literacy skills with their children.
Read Aloud Delaware, a nonprofit organization, offers a program called LENA Start for parents of children ages 0 to 3 years to help them communicate better with their children and become better readers. This initiative was made possible thanks to two grants from the Arsht-Cannon Fund and the Fund for Women.
"It's a really special opportunity for us to have a community with the mothers because there are a lot of moms here who share a similar experience of being native Spanish speakers and not knowing how to help their families at home, their kids mainly," said Abby Cortez, school community liaison at North Georgetown Elementary. "We show them how they can help their kids. We give them bilingual materials and bilingual books, and we teach them the strategies that are very similar to what we are familiar with so that they can build early literacy skills."
Magali Vicente Ortega, a mom of three originally from Guatemala, shared her experience in the program. "Now that we started to read... my children... are already gaining a love for books, but I think that the book has to be given to the children when they want, not [when] you want," she said in Spanish.
During the next school year, Read Aloud Delaware and North Georgetown Elementary will hold two more courses for mothers, whether or not they have other children at the school.
If you are interested in participating, contact Maydelis Gomez-Samon, bilingual outreach coordinator at Read Aloud Delaware, at 302-241-0073.
