New learning program helps children in Florida: The OCHO Project, Read for a Need
Opportunities for Children to Help Others
In 2004, Marilyn Perlyn’s children’s book, The Biggest and Brightest Light: A True Story of the Heart, was published.
This story, which inspires children to make a difference in someone else’s life, led her to create a free program for elementary educators to use that would encourage a love of reading, enhance literary skills, develop character traits, teach service to others, and educate children that they help themselves when they help others.
Marilyn has received a grant from the Broward Education Foundation to expand this program. There are currently one million children without stable housing in our country. A vast majority of these children have few or no books of their own.
In keeping with President Obama’s initiative on community service, The OCHO Project: Read for a Need, was created with a three fold focus: service, literacy, and character education.
OCHO stands for Opportunities for Children to Help Others. The goal of the program is to expose children to issues related to literacy in our country and communities, encourage them to voice their concern, and then seek a solution that they are capable of doing that will bring about change.
Through The OCHO Project, students read eight books, find eight reading sponsors to pledge $1.00, and use donated books to create a book fair for kids without books at home. The program has measurable results, both in the number of books that students read and in the number of books obtained for the book fair.
Last April, Northwest Elementary School, a Title1 school with 700 children in Hudson, Florida, did The OCHO Project. The children read a total of 5600 books and had 3000 gently used books donated for their book fair! Each student was able to choose four books to keep.
Lisa Peart, guidance counselor at Northwest, worked closely with author Marilyn Perlyn and Chip Houghton, owner of LOOK AT A BOOK, a used bookstore that supplies books for The OCHO Project. This project was greatly needed, said Lisa Peart. “Every year it would break my heart to see students that didn’t have enough money to buy a book at the book fair. I’d find myself reaching into my own purse to get change to help them.”
Alex Galoza, an eight-year-old student at Northwest, commented about what it felt like to help his fellow classmates. He said, “It made my heart feel warm to help them. Some of my friends said that when they went to the fair and saw all of those books, their own hearts beat so fast that they couldn’t stop them.”
Now there are other schools in the district that want to do OCHO this school year. The free program will be available in November on Marilyn’s Web site at www.biggestandbrightestlight.com.
For further information contact Marilyn at mperlyn@gmail.com.
*** The Gov Monitor supports educational programs and literacy initiatives for children.
Topics: children, educate children, education, Florida, learning, literacy, read for a need, reading, The OCHO Project, United States, US
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