“ABCXXI - All of Poland Reads to Kids” Foundation’s achievements in the ten-year-period of conducting the national campaign (2001 – 2011)

Foundation “ABCXXI - All of Poland Reads to Kids” for ten years now has been conducting a variety of activities and educational programs aimed at raising children and adolescents for healthy, wise, cultured and moral people. According to the IPSOS research from September 2011, more than 54% parents in Poland read to their children on a regular basis. As many as 2575 kindergartens and 2539 schools have joined our programs “Reading Kindergartens” and “Reading Schools”, with over 6960 Leaders and Coordinators working as volunteers to support the national campaign “All of Poland Reads to Kids”, as well as the wise education campaign.

The most important Foundation’s achievements are:

•    Conducting over 100 educational conferences, workshops and trainings on wise education, covering such topics as: the importance of supporting the emotional health of children and teaching them values, the influence of reading aloud to children on their development, building one’s self-esteem, the influence of mass media on children;
•    Media campaigns on the necessity of reading aloud to children and the essential role of creating secure attachment in the early childhood for the adult life;
•    Organizing National Weeks of Reading to Children, in 2011 over 2600 towns and villages participated in the event;
•    Introducing reading programs – „Reading brings closer” –for disabled and healthy children, „Reading heals”– reading to children at hospitals and hospices;
•    Three editions of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Literary Competition for Contemporary Books for Children and Adolescents;
•    Preparing and implementing the Teaching Values Program and the portal  www.TakWartoZyc.pl, created especially for the purposes of the program;
•    Generations-Creations project, integrating children from orphanages and seniors from universities of the third age;
•    Creating the Golden List of Recommended Books and the Guide to Good Books, available on our websites;
•    Cooperation with penitentiary facilities – educational programs for mothers imprisoned with their children up to  3 years old, the provision of reading corners in visiting rooms with books  (in more than 130 prisons), trainings for workers of penitentiary facilities, under preparation: trainings for prisoners, reading books through the prison broadcasting system;
•    Starting Reading Families Clubs based on the portal Family Reading (www.rodzinneczytanie.pl);
•    Publishing two educational books by Irena Koźmińska (Foundation’s President) and Elżbieta Olszewska (Program Director): “Educating by Reading” and “Guiding a Child into the World of Values”)
•    Initiating the „All of Europe Reads to Kids” programme to promote the idea of reading aloud to children in Europe;
•    Preparing and launching the Internet University of Wise Education directed to parents, teachers, adolescents, couples and educators

10 years of the national campaign "All of Poland Reads to Kids"

Foundation has implemented an important and wide-spread program “Reading in Prison. The Book as a Bridge to Family and a Life with no Bars" in all penitentiary institutions in Poland. In over 130 prisons, reading-to-kids corners have been organized and equipped with books delivered by the Foundation.