One fateful day in the fall three years ago, Katie Brindley came to an outdoor event at the Karabots Center, where Families Forward Philadelphia (FFP) shares a campus with a few other programs. Katie’s work and community service focuses on early childhood education, and she sparked up a conversation with the former education coordinator at FFP. That chance connection was Katie’s entrance into a relationship with FFP.
First, Katie helped FFP staff brighten up some community spaces: they hung giant stickers on the walls and put up inspirational quotes for the kids at FFP to read and think about. Next, Katie helped transform Rubye’s Place, an all-purpose technology and reading space designed specifically for younger kids at FFP. They made the room comfortable with rugs and kid-sized bookcases. They also sorted through books and Katie donated board books for younger kids, as well as purposeful books representing people of different races and cultures for all ages.
The projects were successful and got even bigger. Katie is a member of City Church, a community- and service-orientated church in West Philadelphia. Every Easter, City Church raises special money to give back to the community. Several members of the congregation are reading captains and tutors at Lea Elementary so the theme of the fundraising in 2018 was literacy. With a matching grant, the church raised $40,000 and, ultimately, pledged $13,000 to FFP. With that money and volunteers from City Church coming in November 2019, Katie helped transform the basement of FFP, another space that children use to hang out, learn, and do activities. The City Church grant funded painting supplies, furniture, art, and bookshelves, completing an amazing makeover from clinical-looking hallways to inviting spaces.
For Katie, literacy and education is about experience, as well curriculum. We thank her for her consistency, creativity, and commitment to literacy and community at FFP.
