ANDOVER — Literacy is a top priority for HopeWell, a non-profit foster care provider in the Merrimack Valley and beyond.
The organization has long offered comprehensive foster care throughout the state, with its Andover location supporting approximately 45 children and 25 families a year in the region.
In 2022, HopeWell started supporting its students in a new way through a program called RISE which stands for readiness, inquiry, scholarship, and education. RISE was created to improve the literacy of foster children in kindergarten through third grade with the help of tutors.
“What we know about young people experiencing foster care is that they are our nation’s most marginalized group of young people, and their literacy rates are far below their non-foster peers,” Shaheer Mustafa, president and CEO of HopeWell, said.
The program is almost completely supported by philanthropic contributions, and recently received a major boost in the form of a three-year, $100,000 grant from the Cummings Foundation, something key to allowing RISE to continue operating.
“We’re really grateful to foundations like Cummings that believe in trying to help change the outcomes and new programs like this,” Lisa Crane, HopeWell’s Senior Director of Development said.
The program confronts a glaring issue, the literacy gap that affects foster children from a young age, according to the National Library of Medicine.
“Up to 50% of children in foster care entering kindergarten are at-risk for later reading difficulties,” the National Library of Medicine said.
A major factor that contributes to the gap is the frequency that foster children change their living situation according to Mustafa.
“We provide high-impact tutoring that is delivered in the young person’s home because that’s one of the challenges that youth experiencing foster care faces, they bounce around from place to place. So, about six months of academic progress is lost every time they change their placement,” Mustafa said.
To accommodate children in the program, RISE accounts for any possible moves and allows their tutor to remain consistent.
“What our tutors do is they follow them no matter where they could go. So, if they change from one placement to another, the tutors will continue to provide literacy support,” Mustafa said.
Currently, RISE is only being offered to children in Boston, but with more experience and funding like the grant, it could be offered throughout the state.
“Funding like this plays a critical part in being able to pave the way for a broader expansion,” Mustafa said.
In the meantime, the one of a kind program will continue to support children with the help of the Cummings grant.
“There’s really no other program like RISE anywhere in the country that’s focused specifically for early literacy for kids in foster care. We’re just super thrilled that the foundation believes in the possibility and power of the program,” Crane said.
By Caitlin Dee | [email protected]
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