Essential Estrogen

Iowans can say what they will about former Governor and former Presidential hopeful Tom Vilsack (goodness knows we have), but it's difficult to bash former First Lady Christie Vilsack.

Yesterday evening a small day school in the northeast corner of South Dakota was honored with the first ever Verizon Tech Savvy Award and given a $25,000 prize to continue and expand a school program. The program allows teachers to help American Indian parents write and produce children's books in the native Dakotah language. It fulfills a need for the parents while fulfilling a need in the community -- closing the digital generation gap between parents and children.

The awards are a joint creation of National Conference on Family Literacy, the Verizon Foundation and our very own former First Lady Christie Vilsack. The Tech Savvy is the first national award designed to provide an incentive for grassroots, community-based nonprofit organizations and schools to create programs that demystify technology for parents, enabling them to better guide their children in the use of new media.

In addition to the South Dakota grand prize winner, four additional programs were given regional awards of $5,000 at the banquet. Those four programs are:

• Rhode Island Family Literacy Initiative - Providence, RI - Program teams an English-as-a-second language child with a technology teacher and children's teacher to increase parents' computer and tech skills while improving English comprehension skills.
• Iowa Central Community College - Fort Dodge, IA - Program teaches parents who to use the Internet to communicate with their children's teachers, learn about the web sites their children visit and enhance writing and basic computer skills.
• Forrest Outreach Foundation - Addison, TX - Click-For-Success Prorgram offers weekly computer club classes and home visits where mentors help parents and children work together to improve computer skills.
• LTSC Community Development Corp. - Los Angeles, CA - DISKovery Angelina Program helps immigrants learn to use computers to navigate the challenges of everyday life, including finding public transportation, child care programs and legal services.

"Literacy is no longer just about learning to read," Vilsack said. She added that she hoped the Tech Savvy Awards to draw attention to the need for technological literacy among entire families and spark discussion about the values which emanate from web sites and the importance of technology in our schools.

More than 1,600 educators and advocates traveled to Orlando, FL for the 16th National Conference on Family Literacy. Ironically, Florida ranks 45th in the country in linguistic integration and 47th in high school graduation. Christie Vilsack and Verizon Foundation President Patrick Gaston presented the awards last night.

Kudos to you, Christie! From looking over her web site, we know that Christie will continue to stay involved in our communities -- and that her involvement will bring about great things. (We promise to blog about the Belle Babb Mansfield project soon too!)

Hey, Mari, we know Christie has set the bar high, but we also expect great things from you too as you work for Iowa's women and children's services! Matter-of-fact, we're watching closely to see how much muscle you might flex in the upcoming budgeting battles.