The Children’s Charity Network educates, and inspires, effectively launching Australia’s greatest natural resource (our youth) by wiping out illiteracy across the board of Australia’s population.
Here at CCN we are navigating the course of inspired literacy through writing workshops, art workshops, and awards programs nationwide. Our goal is to enrich the lives of every child in the nation by wiping out illiteracy.
Our programs are designed to launch the next generation, fully loaded with all the tools to perform on a world stage. Guided by the fact that literacy is essential to lifelong success, CCN provides a vehicle to “showcase” literary efforts via our national publication “Oz Kids in Print”.
Our website, new books and educational aids develop reading activities to empower Australian children. CCN operates on one simple and astounding fact: being read to as a youngster is the foremost predictor of academic success in childhood. If a child can read at grade level by third grade, he or she will continue to read at grade level throughout their academic career.
Established in 1998, CCN has reached in excess of 400,000 children plus their parents annually with our art & literary mentoring programs. CCN is governed by a board of directors that ensure funds are spent effectively. We have found that in Australian schools, approximately:
- 1 in 8 children does not reach benchmark levels in reading
- 1 in 15 does not meet benchmark levels in writing
- 1 in 10 does not meet benchmark levels in numeracy
Youth Suicide is 8 times greater in regional and remotes areas, who feel they are worthless and have no prospects for a future. These figures are even higher for our Indigenous Youth We have observed that over the last 19 years 80% of all of the children who have participated in our workshops have achieved up to a 70% improvement in their literary skills and Artist skills.
CCN wish to be in direct contact with every child, parent, and teacher in Australia.
We at CCN share a common core objective as our supporters, to reach each and every Australian child. When the CCN was founded it immediately began a program called Books For Kids (www.booksforkids.org.au) which began to distribute books and a reading program for disadvantaged children across Australia.
Taking it to the next step, we then engaged 120 of Australia’s leading Children’s authors and illustrators to visit schools to conduct live workshops which would improve children’s reading skills and upskill their writing abilities. We later combined these workshops with very popular and effective creative art programs.
Presently we are doing more than 400 one to two-day workshops each year at schools across Australia. During the year children are invited to submit their written stories and artwork to the CCN to be published in a quarterly magazine entitled Oz Kids In Print. Each school term that publication is distributed nationally to schools and public libraries.
The dedicated on-line version: www.ozkids.com.au can be downloaded as a free copy, and covers all editions from day one. We are pleased that our website attracts in excess of 1 million viewers per year. Each child published receives a certificate. Once published in the Oz Kids In Print magazine every entry is eligible for a Young Australian Writers Award.
