Family & Youth Resiliency

Set for Success: Building a Strong Foundation for School Readiness Based on the Social-Emotional Development of Young Children is a new report released by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. This post-conference report compiles seven papers that present the latest scientific findings on the importance of social and emotional school readiness. The papers also provide compelling evidence of programs that help to prepare young children for early school success. The typical concept of readiness for kindergarten has usually been thought of in terms of cognitive learning, such as numbers, colors and the alphabet. However, this report and others recently released, indicate that social and emotional school readiness is a precursor to learning. Before children can learn to read, they must learn basic social and emotional skills – such as the ability to tolerate frustration without “melting down” or acting aggressively, and the ability to be attentive and follow directions. Kindergarten teachers have reported that the single greatest challenge they face is that a majority of the children lack some or all of the needed social and emotional competencies needed to learn.

Set for Success: Foundation for School Readiness Based on the Social-Emotional Development of Young Children: Executive Summary (download PDF from http://www.emkf.org/pdf/eex_summary.pdf)

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The primary goal of First Book is to work with existing literacy programs to distribute new books to children who, for economic reasons, have little or no access to books. First Book distributes books to community-based programs serving children from low-income families through our National Book Bank. The National Book Bank provides a mechanism for publishers to make large donations to First Book for distribution to children from low-income families across the country periodically throughout the year.