Teen wins national award for helping at-risk children read

MEET JORDAN GRABELLE…



AGE: 17

FAMILY: Parents Lisa and Dean, sister Alexa, 20

HOMETOWN: Voorhees

FAVORITE CHILDREN’S BOOK: “Goodnight Moon”

FAVORITE FOOD: Olives

Jordan Grabelle started volunteering at local book distribution events when she was only seven years old. It was there she was able to engage with other children and foster her love for reading. When she was 10 years old, however, Grabelle was shocked to learn that so many of the middle school and elementary school children in her community were choosing books designed for preschoolers.

After some research with her mom, she learned that the issue stemmed from children entering kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades, having barely learned the alphabet. “If you have someone who is lower income, they may enter kindergarten only knowing one or two letters of the alphabet compared to a more affluent peer who knows all 26,” Grabelle said. “It leads to a really big educational gap.”

Grabelle continued learning more about the inequities in youth literacy and decided to create a service project that would help equalize the playing field, giving low-income students the requisite tools to work toward educational success. As a result, her non-profit, Love Letters For Literacy (LLL), was officially born.

When Grabelle first learned the alphabet, it was by playing games with big, colorful foam letters with her mother. For her project, she wanted to donate those foam letters to other families, but she quickly realized that would be too expensive.

“I’ve always loved arts and crafts, so I decided to make paper versions of these packets, with flash cards and markers.” Grabelle said. “That’s basically how I got started, trying to connect with lower income schools or Head Start programs and see if they would let me play the flashcard games with the kids.”

Each literacy packet contains 26 handmade flashcards from A-Z, a note that encourages reading, and instructions explaining how to play games with the flashcards. It was important for Grabelle to find a literacy expert at the University of Pennsylvania to approve the games she had in mind. “Games are really engaging, and we thought this would be an effective way to get the families involved in the children’s journey to learn how to read” she said.

But in 2014, it was no small task for Grabelle to get her non-profit up and running. At first, it was challenging for the shy 10- year-old to break out of her shell and solicit help from authority figures in the community.

“I went to my local Rotary Club to ask them for funding for a website, and I had to pitch them, which was really scary, but they were willing to help me,” Grabelle said. “Helping the children is what gave me the confidence I needed to start moving forward and also proof that I could convince other adults that what I was doing was working.”

Grabelle also leaned on the Netter Center for Community Partnerships as a resource to connect with various low-income schools in the area. From there, the program started gaining traction, and Grabelle was able to slowly recruit a movement of volunteers to help her make packets and engage with the children.

Knowing that she wanted to expand, Grabelle joined social media three years ago and sent out a ton of direct messages to service clubs all across the country, causing a ripple effect. What was once a local service project in Camden County rapidly swelled throughout the country and became one of the official programs of Circle K International, a huge collegiate-level service organization.

“Going international wasn’t my main priority, but so many international service groups like Circle K and Rotary Clubs began contacting me for more information,” she said.

Now LLL is represented in all 50 states, and 30 countries. Roughly 20,000 volunteers have joined Grabelle in her mission to promote youth literacy. The organization has gone on to help over 43,000 at-risk children learn to read.

To commend her extraordinary achievements, Grabelle was a recipient of both the Camden County Freedom Medal and the Diller Tikkun Olam Award this year, which comes with $36,000 from the Helen Diller Family Foundation. Grabelle plans to use the money for her education, and to help spread even more awareness and change to childhood illiteracy.

“To me, Tikkun Olam is really about repairing the world in whatever way or capacity that you can. I’ve found a way I can help with one particular issue and try to inspire others to join me in fixing childhood illiteracy.” Grabelle said. “But because there are so many ways to fix the world, everyone can practice Tikkun Olam and everyone just has to figure out what their specific calling is.”

For more information and how to get involved, please visit: lovelettersliteracy.org/

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