Research > Environmental Scan > Patterns > Existing Infrastructures

Working through Existing Infrastructures

The program understands that they can reach families effectively through existing infrastructures where families already have long-standing relationships with trusted advisers.
Cool Culture




Our programs succeed by working in partnership with early childhood program and elementary school staff that have long-standing relationships with low-income families, and are therefore able to inspire parents to travel outside their communities to access cultural and educational opportunities for their children’s development.
-- Cool Culture Cultural Liaison Handbook
Cool Culture works with early childhood educators and elementary school staff who already have long-standing relationships with low-income families. Families already trust EC educators. As Cool Cultural Liaisons, the EC educators inspire parents to participate in the Cool Culture program and bring their children to as many of the 90 participating museums, botanical gardens and zoos as possible.

The Cool Culture Cultural Liaison Handbook outlines the Cultural Liaisons':
  •  Three goals to help increase parent participation:
    (1) Every family knows how to use the Family Pass
    (2) 75% of families will use the Pass at least once by February 1
    (3) 50% of families will use the Pass at least twice by June 1
  • Responsibility to complete a mandatory online survey in February and June about progress at their center
  • Role to coordinate Family Pass registration and distribution
  • Role to inspire and prepare families to visit museums and distribute and promote resources: e-Family Time, Get Out & Go!, promotion flyers, etc.
  • Opportunity to attend Professional Development Workshops to generate excitement about exhibits and activities at partner cultural institutions
  • Resources to keep informed: The Rundown e-newsletter, Facebook, Website
Nurturing Healthy Bodies and Brains
WIC Offices
  • Federally funded Special Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP) for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
  • Provides nutritious foods, nutrition counseling, and referrals to health care and social services
  • Serves low-income pregnant, post-partum and breastfeeding women, infants, and children up to the age of 5 who are at nutritional risk.
Raising A Reader
Core Program: Five Anchor Behaviors
  • Children: The child drives the process. Who can resist a child asking to share a book? When a child is excited about books s/he will ask loved ones to share it over and over again.
  • Implementers: Using a train-the-trainer model, program implementers are trained to communicate early literacy strategies to parents. Raising A Reader helps implementers (often teachers) work directly with parents and build strong communication.
  • Parents: Parents learn and engage in read-aloud strategies. Parent-friendly research-based practices are paired with an award-winning DVD to ensure all parents can share books with children. When children bring home the red bags filled with high-quality children’s books, parents are just as eager to see what’s inside and spend time sharing books together.
  • Bookbags: Raising A Reader’s book bag delivery system is turnkey, making implementation easy. The National Office production team works with each affiliate to identify collections that are right for each community. Books and materials arrive ready to use and can be enhanced with materials and online implementer resources to ensure successful implementation.
  • Libraries: Through ‘graduation’ events, visits to local and school libraries and the distribution of  Raising A Reader’s blue library bags families utilize vital library resources, continue to borrow books and sustain reading routines they have established through the program.
Reach Out and Read Colorado
Reach Out and Read uses the existing framework of annual visits to the pediatrician to get their early literacy message to low-income parents and to get books in the hands of children.

From Reach Out and Read: The Evidence
"Parents participating in Reach Out and Read were more likely to rate their child’s pediatrician as
helpful than those not participating in Reach Out and Read. Pediatricians in the Reach Out and Read
group were more likely to rate parents as receptive than those in the non-Reach Out and Read group.
Mothers in the Reach Out and Read group were two times more likely to report enjoyment in reading
together with their child than those in the non-Reach Out and Read group." (Jones et al, 2000)
Ready to Read Corps
The Ready to Read Corps works with WIC offices, food pantries, churches, hospitals and benefits offices to engage parents and caregivers in places they already visit. They visit organizations where the parents and caregivers will already have waiting room time such as a food pantry, primary care clinic, Women’s Care Center, Free Store, and Opportunity Center. 
Ready to Read Resource Center
Working with Early Childhood Professionals
From Borrowing Kits
Ready to Read Tubs and Read to Me at Home Tubs can only be borrowed by Alaskan agencies and professionals who serve young children and their caregivers, such as (but not limited to) child care centers, licensed family child care providers, early childhood education agencies, libraries, health clinics, and faith-based organizations. Lapsit Bags and Read With Me Bags can be borrowed by any Alaskan resident.