It is with great pleasure that LINC welcomes a new Director of Development, Katie Gardner-Boehm to lead our fundraising efforts during this significant moment in LINC’s history–our 25th anniversary. Katie Gardner-Boehm (she/her) is a former educator and experienced fundraiser. Her years in the classroom fuel her dedication to respecting and empowering children, and fostering healthy families and strong communities by ensuring access to high quality educational programs and resources. Katie believes that empathy, storytelling, authenticity, and reliability are paramount in relationship building and fundraising. These values drive her work and are responsible for her achievements as a development and organizational…

(Left) VIP Rosa Lassalle led our parent workshop on graphic design. (Right) An example design from our workshop. LINC’s Very Involved Parents (VIPs) form the core of our literacy justice movement as leaders and education advocates and we are committed to training them with the tools they need to transform their communities. That includes ongoing professional development opportunities for VIPs to learn all sorts of invaluable skills, even after they graduate from our academy. On August 6th, a recent VIP Academy graduate, Rosa Lassalle volunteered to lead a workshop on how to create flyers, presentations, and videos using Canva —…

At LINC we celebrate culture through reading every day and this year on September 28 we partnered with the SBH Health System WIC to honor Hispanic Heritage Month with a special virtual program centered around hope. Our bilingual program Esperanza: A Celebration of Hispanic Heritage and Hope blended literacy, music and culture into a delightful dish. Featuring the book Food Proud To Be Latino! Comida by Ashley Mireles, we explored foods from different cultures accompanied with the Latin songs Sopa de Caracol and Color Esperanza by Diego Torres. LINC families love to share facts and foods with their communities and…

On Wednesday, September 8, LINC parents and staff came together to honor the newest class of Queens Very Involved Parents (VIPs). The morning was filled with families eating, laughing, catching up, and swapping stories about how LINC has impacted their lives. “I’m really glad that organizations like LINC exist because they have really great ideas about how to engage the kids. I did what I learned from LINC and read to my child 20 minutes a day. She went from not reading to reading level 2 books in 90 days,” VIP Deon Daniels said to a VIP couple seated across…

On Monday, September 13 LINC welcomed two new Civic Corp members to the team! Gianna McGeough, Corporate and Individual Volunteer Member, and Jonah Adler, Volunteer Communications Member will be serving with LINC for the next ten months. Gianna and Jonah will both be growing our volunteer programs in a myriad of capacities. As an undergraduate student at Columbia University, Gianna worked as a lead coordinator for the America Reads and America Counts (AR/AC) program at local public elementary schools in Harlem. Started in 1996, AR/AC serves as a tutoring initiative for ages 1 through 12 by giving children the personal…

With 25 years of experience helping parents throughout New York City raise resilient readers, we at LINC understand that our work does not stop with read-alouds. Our approach helps families build a variety of lifelong skills in order to generate lasting change in their communities. In 2016, the American Psychological Association found that “children’s initial reading competency is correlated with the home literacy environment, number of books owned, and parent distress.” Homes where parents feel more financially secure lead to greater confidence and an ability to prioritize reading with their children. To that end, LINC partnered with our friends at…

LINC’s Very Involved Parents (VIPs) are at the core of our early literacy model. As advocates for their neighborhoods, VIPs shape the future of the next generation of readers and leaders through shaping their families and communities. By uniting in their shared passion for literacy justice, these parents form a sturdy support network for parents all throughout New York City. At LINC, we believe this work is essential to honor. On October 23rd, 2020, we hosted our annual celebration for the many wonderful accomplishments of the VIPs throughout the year. Though we were unable to celebrate in person, we had…

This summer eight wonderful children’s book authors from around the world transported LINC families through our Summer Author Adventures series! Each author inspired us with their unique words of wisdom and reminded us why we read and they write. Join us as we revel in their most meaningful messages as we prepare to go back to school. On why they write “The goal of Canticos is to bring families together through a shared love of languages, music and culture. I wanted to create something beautiful and fun to celebrate nursery rhymes with kids of all backgrounds.” Susie Jaramillo, Little Sunny…

Even Hurricane Henri can’t stop these cyclists! On Sunday, August 29, 2021, the long awaited TD Five Boro Bike Tour took place despite postponement of the original August 22 date. We missed it last year due to the pandemic and we weren’t going to miss it again! Shout out to Team LINC – Marco Martinez, Perry Ziff, Leo Ziff, Yvan Kaprielian and our friends at Mind Body Results (MBR) Tyrell Taylor, Taurean Coppin, Carnel Patterson, Mackenzie Wells, Atiba Grant, Tea Rose Pankey, and James Lee Buckley. We are proud and grateful for your passion and dedication to cycle 40 miles…

LINC welcomes Yvan Kaprielian, our newest cyclist to Team LINC as we get ready to ride the TD Five Boro Bike Tour on Sunday. Get to know Yvan in this brief interview and why he chose LINC as his beneficiary. Introducing Superstar Cyclist Yvan Kaprielian 1. What was your favorite story or book as a child? My favorite book was The Black Stallion, about a boy whose boat sinks in the Mediterranean and he is saved by a horse. What I most loved about was the special connection the boy developed with the horse (which eventually becomes an unbeatable race…

LINC is thrilled to partner with the biking community Mind Body Results (MBR) to transform the lives of NYC’s youngest readers in the 2021 TD Five Boro Bike Tour. These cyclists are social justice advocates and this Sunday, August 22, they will pedal 40 miles with purpose to benefit LINC. Get to know our team in this short interview series. Introducing Superstar Cyclist Carnel Patterson 1. What was your favorite story or book as a child? My favorite story book as a child was Dr. Suess’ Green Eggs and Ham. 2. How long have you been cycling? I have been…

We’re thrilled to introduce our dedicated and dynamic cyclist team for this year’s TD Five Boro Bike Tour. LINC is partnering with biking community Mind Body Results (MBR) to transform the lives of NYC’s youngest readers. MBR riders Tyrell Taylor, Taurean Coppin, Carnel Patterson, Mackenzie Wells, Atiba Grant, Tea Rose Pankey, and James Lee Buckley will join with LINC community members to form a team of cyclists for change on this 40 mile, car-free bike ride to raise funds for our vital work of fighting for education justice and providing support to families of children aged 0-5. Meet the MBR…

Bilingual Education and Multicultural Books Publisher, Lil Libros Awards LINC with Abundant Early Literacy Resources When the bilingual education and multicultural books publisher Lil Libros asked their social media community to recommend an exemplary non-profit organization that would benefit from their products, LINC was thrilled to hear that our organization had been nominated. We were even more ecstatic when we learned that we won the Lil Libros award and would receive an abundance of early literacy resources for our work. We could not be prouder that Lil Libros personally selected LINC as an outstanding organization of impact that aligns with…

LINC Celebrates National Summer Learning Day with a Bilingual Program Featuring Renowned Children’s Author Mitali Perkins on the Joys of Living in Between “I think we should all be between cultures. Cross borders with your children while they’re young. Make friends with someone who doesn’t speak your language – be such good friends with them that they invite you to their home, share their food with you, and teach you their customs. Learn each other’s customs. It’s important to do this while they are young because if you wait till they grow up it’s too late! Adults have a hard…

The world’s largest urban bike ride is back, the TD Five Boro Bike Tour will take place on Sunday, August 22, 2021 and Literacy Inc. (LINC) has been selected as a beneficiary of this iconic fundraising event. Ride with us and help bring the joy of reading to more little New Yorkers. Organized by Bike New York and sponsored by TD Bank, this annual ride was cancelled last year due to the pandemic making this year more exciting than ever. Roll through the streets of all five boroughs of New York City carefree and take in the sights and sounds…

On June 17, 2021, LINC participated in our third Virtual Service Day with ViacomCBS in which volunteer employees recorded and submitted 23 bilingual videos to add to our read aloud library. Through LINC’s Read Aloud Video Project, LINC led an orientation via Zoom and provided volunteers with a toolkit that walked them through choosing “just right book,” how to read aloud with enthusiasm, and how to easily share their videos with us. We placed an emphasis on authentic literature for this project and asked volunteers to choose books that had characters of color, or that were written by authors of…

NYC Reads Expands to East Harlem Building on the success of the Reads Initiative in South Jamaica and East New York, and with the generous support of The Pinkerton Foundation and The Carmel Hill Fund, LINC is leading a 9-month planning phase to launch East Harlem Reads. Expanding in East Harlem includes welcoming the New York Public Library into the Reads network of partners and growing LINC’s footprint into an eighth neighborhood! “We have witnessed the positive results of the Reads Initiative in South Jamaica and East New York and we are very excited to support the expansion of this…

This month, LINC arrived at a major milestone: over this past year of virtual programming, we have engaged with 1000 families across our literacy neighborhoods. We are awed and so proud of this incredible accomplishment, which is the result of our fantastic team and the resilience of our community of families. Fifteen months ago, we announced that we were rolling out a calendar of digital programming and resource guides designed to keep children actively learning while shut inside. You can read here about our pledge to continue our mission of combatting the literacy crisis and bridge the gap that school…

Partnership to promote equity and inclusion for New York City families through distribution of free books. June 22, 2021 (Long Island City, NY) – Today, Fidelis Care, a health plan serving more than 2.3 million members across New York State and Literacy Inc. announced Diversity through Literacy, a timely initiative which brings diverse books and stories to underserved communities across New York City. Fidelis Care will work with Literacy Inc. to identify and distribute children’s books that provide perspectives on race, social justice, equity and inclusion. “LINC creates culturally responsive programs that build community and drive visible, measurable parent-child change.…

LINC recognizes Juneteenth Independence Day–Emancipation Day–as a day of action and reflection. Our staff will take Friday off to engage in a weekend of individual or collective action in support of racial justice and to raise the visibility and importance of Black History towards the pursuit of racial and education justice. Here is how we can support and take action! Juneteenth commemorates the true end of slavery in the United States. Two months after Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered in Virginia, union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas on June 19th, 1865, to announce slaves had been outlawed two years…

“LINC trabaja con padres y comunidades para abordar la crisis de alfabetización y todas las injusticias que resultan de eso—todo para construir una sociedad más equitativa y un futuro más habitable. Los padres se apasionan ayudando a sus niños a ser exitosos; les mostramos formas probadas y veraces para que la alfabetización sea visible y valorada…Nuestro trabajo transforma a las familias; nuestras familias transforman las comunidades—esto transforma el mundo. Mimi Levin Lieber, Fundadora de LINC Literacy Inc. (LINC) los invita a conocer como estamos logrando la promesa de la alfabetización temprana juntos, a pesar del desafío de la pandemia. Nuestro…