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KEYS is a group of community members who focus on prevention efforts for
children 5-10 years of age.
KEYS Meeting
February 8, 2002
Minutes
Olympic Medical Center and West End
Elna
Kawal called the meeting to order. Those
attending were Elna Kawal, Elna Kawal, Irene Smith, Denise Bower (send via
Mary at West End Outreach, Judith Morris, Debra Roos,
Patty Hannah, Elsa Johnson, Fay Doyle, Kathleen Dionne, Bonnie and
Roger Moses, and Cynthia Martin.
Elna
explained the evolution of KEYS. We
began with the focus on literacy. We
have been trying to get a calendar of literacy activities being conducted in
the county. Now we are ready to
expand and try to get some of the information out to others. Judith had previously brought up the need to look at what are
we doing. We have
collected several hundred books, done some work with tutoring Spanish
speaking children by high school students, and passed out books at several
festivals.
Kathleen
went over the need to be effective by looking at our mission more carefully.
She brought in some suggestions for our mission.
“With a belief that to improve the success
rate of future generations and to prevent the cycle of failure it is
important to focus on prevention. The
ability to read well is one of the most important skill required for
students to succeed. When a
child does not read well general knowledge goes down, spelling and writing
abilities are diminished and vocabulary suffers.
It is especially important that a child is able to read at grade
level by the completion of the third grade of school.
Difficulty in learning to read dims excitement and love of
learning.”
The
last part of the statement she brought in is the one we condensed and made
into our new statement below:
“It is our mission to enhance and support existing
organizations providing services to help elementary children in Clallam
County learn to read for fun, information, and communication.”
We discussed giving books on the birthday for each
child at a specific grade such as grade 1.
Patty said for about $500 we could get lots of books to give out.
Perhaps we could give the books out in coordination of a reading
program. Irene said that as a
part of their program they give out a book to each child that comes no
matter what the age. In PA they
do a whole day of activities related to reading somewhere around Dr.
Seuss’s birthday. Debra
discussed the reading activities at Franklin with guest readers.
Forks and Franklin both do dress up activities.
The evening program in Forks usually gets about 125-175 people.
Larry Welch did report last month that Books First
had $1800 but that isn’t much money.
These books must be given out at
least quarterly and 70% much be low income. Judith discussed the need to have the books ready when a
festival would come up and this would give us a reserve. Ann Brewer is even willing to help write the grant to the
Peninsula Daily News. Elsa
talked about grants she had been involved with on previous grants. She can also get Dover books for about $1 per book.
She also asked about using older books (gently).
Elsa and Cynthia will work on the grant to Peninsula Daily News.
Patty will have Ann call Cynthia.
We also need to contact the people from Boeing.
Larry might know and Elna will be willing to contact Boeing.
Debra will talk about putting information in the newsletters for the
staff of PA school district.
Prevention Works! is having a Big Event on March 1
with Judy Ford, we have been asked to talk about KEYS or rather have a
bulletin board made by Elna and Kathleen.
The brochure can be downloaded from www.preventionworkscc.org
We will have a sign up sheet for potential members and for calendar
events we should be accumulating.
The next meeting of KEYS will be on March 7 at 4:00
at Olympic Medical Center in Linkletter Auditorium.
The meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully
submitted,
Cynthia
Martin
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