Contacts:
Sheree Wichard, 718-788-9585, sheree@wy-pr.com
Donel Young, 732-295-2406, donel@wy-pr.com
26th Annual Ezra Jack Keats Foundation Minigrants
Call for Proposals—Applying Is Fast and Easy
More than $800,000 Given Directly to Educators at
Public Schools and Libraries across the United States
Past Winning Projects Inspire and Delight
NEW YORK—January 15, 2014—The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, which fosters children’s love of reading and creative expression in our diverse culture, celebrates the 26th year of its Minigrant Program with a call for proposals. Approximately 70 grants of $500 each will be awarded to qualifying teachers and librarians at public schools and libraries across the United States. The deadline for grant submissions is March 15, 2014, and decisions will be emailed to all applicants by May 1, allowing educators to plan for the next academic year accordingly.
“We are in awe of the extraordinary programs designed by the Minigrant award-winning teachers and librarians,” says Deborah Pope, Executive Director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation. “These educators go above and beyond, inspiring their students to create amazing pieces of art, writing, and even scientific experiments. In the past year, students mounted projects involving food and math, wrote sequels to Keats’ classic The Snowy Day, and made Peruvian-style cloth artwork to map their community.
“We are dedicated to continuing our direct support to exceptional educators whose program ideas will foster creativity, cooperation and interaction with a diverse community,” adds Pope.
Since 1987, the Foundation, established by the late Caldecott award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats, has provided more than $800,000 in support of Minigrant programs spanning the 50 states and the U.S. Commonwealth. To learn more about Minigrants and to apply, visit the Ezra Jack Keats Minigrant Program.
Featured on the Foundation’s website is a gallery of past outstanding Minigrant programs, including these, which can be viewed at this link: Great Minigrant Programs.
About the Ezra Jack Keats Minigrant Program
Public education is one of the greatest legacies of our country, one that benefits children from every walk of life. For Keats, it was at public school that he received his greatest encouragement to pursue his vocation as an artist and at the public library that he found a haven that introduced him to the wonders of art history. To offer a similar experience to new generations, the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation created the Minigrant Program.
About The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation
The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation fosters children’s love of reading and creative expression by supporting arts and literacy programs in public schools and libraries; cultivating new writers and illustrators of exceptional picture books that reflect the experience of childhood in our diverse culture; and protecting and promoting the work of Keats, the preeminent author-illustrator whose book The Snowy Day broke the color barrier in mainstream children’s publishing.
Keats. Imagination. Diversity.