Boys & Girls Clubs of America and JCPenney Launch Newsletter for Parents

Boys & Girls Club of America
Friday, 1 June 2001

Newsletter Promotes Importance of After-School Learning.

Atlanta (June 1, 2001) – Although the bell is about to ring, announcing the end of the school year in thousands of communities across the country, leading educational experts warn that most children need to continue learning through the summer months. One answer to this taxing dilemma is a newsletter for parents published by Boys & Girls Clubs of America (B&GCA) and JCPenney Afterschool.

Learn & Live is a four-page newsletter, packed with helpful hints on how parents can engage their children in the joy of learning. It will be published quarterly, beginning with the first issue in June. (Use Acrobat Reader to view. Download the Reader.)

"Based on research, we know that how well kids do in school depends a lot on how much their families help them learn at home," said Roxanne Spillett, President, Boys & Girls Clubs of America. "We're very excited about Learn & Live and the most important lesson it teaches children, which is that learning is a priority and is highly valued by their parents."

Content for Learn & Live is based on B&GCA's proven educational enhancement strategy, Project Learn that was shown to produce an 11 percent improvement in a child's overall GPA in a 30-month evaluation by Columbia University. Project Learn, which was developed and expanded to all Boys & Girls Clubs nationwide with the financial support of JCPenney Afterschool, consists of five components and two of the most important are parental involvement and the use of high-yield learning activities to make learning more relevant.

The premiere issue of Learn & Live tackles the importance of continuous learning through the summer vacation period – during which kids can typically lose one to two months worth of reading and math performance. This loss becomes even more significant when you consider teachers will have to spend the first four to eight weeks of the new school year re-teaching what kids have forgotten.

The design of Learn & Live is reader-friendly, encouraging parents to post pages on their refrigerators for easy access to everyday learning ideas. One such idea is how a parent can turn cooking dinner into a lesson involving math and science. A parent can easily transform the kitchen into a classroom by reading the list of ingredients, using fractions to show the difference in volume between ½ and ¾ of a cup, explaining the difference between the good bacteria found in yogurt and so-called bad bacteria that makes people sick.

"Learn & Live is an excellent resource for families with children. It's useful, simple and it's free," said Ed Solczak, Director of JCPenney Afterschool. "The newsletter helps kids take concepts they've learned in school and apply them to real-life situations – which really makes the lessons stick."

Each issue of Learn & Live will showcase a success story from a local Boys & Girls Club. The June issue features the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Ana, California and its "Comite de Cien Familias." This "Committee of 100 Families" meets regularly at the Club to address such core issues as work, housing, health and safety.

"The priority for these families is earning a living, " said Manual Ballestero, a teacher at Pio Pico Elementary School and committee coordinator. "We're trying to share that school is the road out of poverty."

Learn & Live is available to parents on the JCPenney website (www.jcpenney.net), at the Afterschool Zones inside each of the 1,100 JCPenney stores, on B&GCA's website (www.bgca.org), and at some 2,800 Boys & Girls Clubs nationwide.

Future issues will look at topics such as how to beat the back-to-school blues, literacy and the family's role, along with how-to prepare your kids for graduation.

Boys & Girls Clubs of America (www.bgca.org) comprises a national network of more than 2,800 neighborhood-based facilities annually serving some 3.3 million young people, primarily from disadvantaged circumstances. Known as "The Positive Place for Kids," Clubs provide guidance-oriented programs on a daily basis for children 6 - 18 years old, conducted by a full-time professional staff. Key programs emphasize character and leadership development, educational enhancement, career preparation, health and life skills, the arts, and sports, fitness and recreation. National headquarters are located in Atlanta.

J.C. Penney Company, Inc. is the sponsor of JCPenney Afterschool, a partnership committed to providing kids with high-quality afterschool programs to help them reach their full potential. J.C. Penney Company, Inc. is one of America's largest department store, drugstore, catalog, and e-commerce retailers, employing approximately 270,000 associates. The Company operates approximately 1,100 JCPenney department stores in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. Eckerd operates approximately 2,650 drugstores throughout the Southeast, Sunbelt, and Northeast regions of the U.S. JCPenney Catalog, including e-commerce, is the nation's largest catalog merchant of general merchandise.

For more information, or to contact Boys & Girls Club of America, see their website at: www.bgca.org