Too Small to Fail Releases “Talking is Teaching Community Campaign Guide” to Activate and Enhance Local Word Gap Campaigns Nationwide
New York — Too Small to Fail released today its “Talking is Teaching Community Campaign Guide,” a how-to roadmap for local leaders across the country to initiate and enhance on-the-ground efforts to help close the word gap and boost young children’s early brain development. The guide and corresponding free materials and resources can now be found on www.toosmall.org/community.
The Community Campaign Guide builds off the success and lessons learned from Too Small to Fail’s local campaign efforts in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Oakland, California. The local campaign, titled “Talking is Teaching: Talk, Read, Sing,” launched in these communities in 2014. Since then, Too Small to Fail has worked within these communities to engage trusted messengers — such as pediatricians, faith-based leaders, child care providers and librarians — to educate parents and deliver high-quality tools that can help them engage in meaningful interactions with their young children starting at birth.
The guide offers adaptive Talking is Teaching creative content and resources that encourage parents to talk, read, and sing with their children during everyday routines — from waiting for the bus, to making dinner, to giving a bath; ideas for engaging the business community and other allies to raise awareness; and suggestions about elevating community messages through local media. The free multimedia assets can be easily tailored to respond to the individual needs of a community.
The “Talking is Teaching Community Campaign Guide” is designed to inform local efforts underway across the country, as well as the one launched today in New York City. Today, at SCO FirstStepNYC Early Childhood Center in Brooklyn, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined First Lady of New York City Chirlane McCray and local parents to launch New York City’s “Talk to Your Baby, Their Brains Depend on It” public awareness campaign. This campaign will distribute 100,000 toolkits to parents which will include a “Talking is Teaching” resource for families, jointly developed by Too Small to Fail and Sesame Street. New York City will partner with organizations such as Reach Out and Read and the Administration for Child Services EarlyLearn sites for distribution.
“This is a conversation we want to have with as many people as we can reach because everybody needs to be creative and smart about how we better prepare our kids for the future,” said Secretary Clinton.
For more information about the “Talking is Teaching Community Campaign Guide”, visit Too Small to Fail online (www.toosmall.org/community), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/2smalltofail), or on Twitter (www.twitter.com/2smalltofail).
Photos from today’s event can be found at here.
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