VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Jay Height:
Hi, I’m Jay Height here at Shepherd community. And I’m excited to update you this week. About some of the exciting things happening with our students.

Jay Height:
We are working hard to help them move forward and catch up from the learning loss. We’ve been privileged to work with the city and the mind trust to provide e-learning sites throughout the city. Here in our neighborhood to help families, but we’re also working with several hundred kids in our own programs with a two-year plan to get them operating, at least at grade level. Let me share with you a couple of opportunities that you could have.

Jay Height:
We’re working on gathering specific books to help our students be able to read and provide them for them. If you’re interested, you can call us here at shepherd community 3 1 7 3 7 5 0 2 0 3. And we can share with you the list of books, but also we’re excited to be partnering with the Mitch Daniels leadership foundation to bring the imagination library to the 4 6 2 0 1 zip code. We’re so excited for this very important program. If you don’t know about the imagination library, it’s Dolly Parton’s program to help every kid under the age of five in our zip code, be able to on a monthly basis, receive a new book for them to be read or for them to look through and work on their vocabulary skills. I know my own grandson and granddaughter get their books and they love them. They live out of state and we want to bring it here to our neighborhood so that kids can get a early start on literacy. And so we’re so thankful that the Mitch Daniels leadership foundation would work with us to help make this happen here.

Jay Height:
We’re working to raise the money to begin the program so that this summer kids under five in the 4 6 2 0 1 zip code, will start receiving their books. We’ll continue to grow that over the next few years. And hopefully we’ll be able to go to the 4 6 2 0 3 zip code soon as well. And we’re excited to partner with imagination library as well. We are also working to help our students by having folks who will volunteer to through technology spend 45 minutes a week with our students, reading with them and having the students read back to them.

Jay Height:
This is a program we can do. It’s COVID safe. You do it through technology, but it’s helping our kids move forward. Literacy is where we want to make a huge impact and help our kids continue to move forward. We don’t want to give up any more ground and we want to help make up ground. And you can be a part of that by volunteering. If you’re interested, contact Donna Alexander here at Shepherd community, that’s Donnaa@shepherdcommunity.org. Lots of opportunities. We’re excited by the great team that are out of school, learning staff, our student ministries, as well as our academy are doing to impacting the lives of our students. We have lots of curriculum that we’re using special programs to help them increase their skills and to move forward. Education is a key foundation for our families. As we work with them to break the cycle of poverty. On this road to recovery, it’s an important task for us all. Won’t you join with us? Thanks and have a great day.