Nebraska Letterbox Club selected for Celebrate Literacy Award

BKC.jpg

The Nebraska Letterbox Club, a program organized by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Academy for Child and Family Well Being (ACFW), was selected as the recipient of the Celebrate Literacy Award by the Eastern Nebraska Reading Council.

The award will be presented at the next Eastern Nebraska Reading Council meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, at the Barnes & Noble at SouthPointe Pavilions in Lincoln.

“The faculty, staff and students at the Academy for Child and Family Well Being are very much honored to receive this award for the Nebraska Letterbox Club,” members of the ACFW stated. “This recognition helps us further our mission of providing a monthly package of children’s books and a handwritten letter to youth in the Nebraska Foster Care system. This award will help to increase awareness as to the literacy and emotional needs faced by children in foster care, and of our community-based effort to help youth feel special while building their own personal library that they can take with them throughout the foster-care system.”

The Celebrate Literacy Award is an International Literacy Association program that recognizes organizations, institutions and individuals that have made significant literacy contributions at the local, state or provincial level. As the Celebrate Literacy Award winner at the local level, Nebraska Letterbox Club will be eligible for the state award, which will be presented in February.

Each year, the Nebraska Letterbox Club sends monthly packages for six months filled with books, math activities, games, stationery, and handwritten letters to children in Nebraska’s foster care system. The first of the six packages for the year are sent in February.

In 2012, the Academy for Child and Family Well Being began partnering with the Letterbox Club, a program that began five years earlier in the United Kingdom. Entering its fifth year, the Letterbox Club at Nebraska remains the only United States partnership with the U.K.’s program.

To learn more about the Nebraska Letterbox Club, visit http://go.unl.edu/letterbox.