Announcing Eat. Learn. Play. as Reading Partners’ Community Champion Award recipient
March 31, 2023
Reading Partners is thrilled to announce Stephen and Ayesha Curry’s Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation as the recipient of our Community Champion Award! The Community Champion Award is new this year and celebrates a community partner that demonstrates a clear commitment to literacy and a measurable impact on youth in the Bay Area. Since its launch in July 2019, Eat. Learn. Play. has raised and invested over $38 million, supporting 27 community partners, and reaching over 150,000 youth in their first three years.
With their Learn pillar focused on closing the literacy gap, Eat. Learn. Play. has invested $4.5 million towards literacy to support Oakland students to become better readers. In September 2021, the Eat. Learn. Play. Bus, a mobile resource center was launched, delivering tens of thousands of new books and nutritious meals directly to kids and families in Oakland. Since 2021, Eat. Learn. Play. funded more than $1.8 million to support classroom literacy projects by Oakland teachers, funding over 2,000 projects in schools across Oakland. In addition, they launched the Little Town Libraries program in April 2022 to encourage neighborhood book sharing and develop a love of reading among Oakland children. Along with community partners, Eat. Learn. Play. plans to build up to 150 total Little Town Libraries in neighborhoods across Oakland. In all, Eat. Learn. Play. has distributed over 500,000 high-quality, age-appropriate, and culturally relevant books to Oakland students since 2019.
Reading Partners is proud to partner with an organization that provides critical funding and support to Oakland students, families, teachers, and schools. Eat. Learn. Play. will be featured during our Literacy is Liberation gala, and will be presented with the Community Champion award on stage at the event. Chris Helfrich, CEO of Eat. Learn. Play., will accept the award on behalf of the organization. We hope you’ll join us for a fantastic evening celebrating literacy and the Bay Area community!