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2.04.08 | The Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation awards $20,000 to Hopa Mountain for StoryMakers
The Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation announces a $20,000 grant to Hopa Mountain for the StoryMakers program, which helps parents and early childhood educators create language rich home learning environments. Funding from the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation will be used specifically to purchase age appropriate books and accompanying educational resource materials for parents that will be distributed by local advisory teams to children ages 0-5 living in all seven of Montana's tribal communities. These books are selected and distributed by local advisory teams along with specially designed resources for parents and help in how to use these books to maximize their children's educational and emotional benefits from parent-child reading and storytelling. "Early childhood education is a primary interest of the Foundation and a substantial body of empirical evidence exists that shows a child's chances of success later in life are multiplied greatly when parents and caregivers begin the learning process as early as possible," said Mike Halligan, executive director of the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation.
Through StoryMakers, Hopa Mountain is helping parents and early childhood educators create language rich home learning environments. There is accumulating evidence that very young children's experiences, especially their experiences surrounding the use of language, have profound effects on children's growing brains, and therefore on their potential for school-readiness at kindergarten age. In fact, the amount of language experience alone – how many words are spoken to a baby/toddler/preschooler by a caring parent or guardian in any language – has been shown to correlate strongly with success in reading. Success in reading correlates strongly with success in school. And success in school substantially increases the chances of physical, social, and economic well being in adulthood.
Established in 1988, The Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation is the major philanthropic organization for the Washington Foundation and the Washington family. The Foundation is funded by the profits of the Washington Companies. Since its inception, Foundation giving and the Washington Family's personal contributions to charitable causes total more than $70 million. Grants are awarded in the areas of: Arts and Culture, Community Service, Education and Health and Human Services.
Hopa Mountain is a nonprofit organization based in Bozeman, Montana that invests in rural and tribal community leaders as they work to improve education, ecological, and economic development in their home communities. For more information about Hopa Mountain's StoryMakers program, please visit www.hopamountain.org or contact the program director Linda Y. Clark at (406) 581-1744.
