Funded Projects

The Foundation is chartered as a support organization, and has made numerous grants for the benefit of the library including support in the following areas:

 • Annual funding for the Library Advisory Councils—Art, Music, Children’s,
    Nautical, and Health

• Books for Dessert—a book club for adults with intellectual disabilities

• Parent-Child Home Program

• Wireless internet service

• Jobs and Careers Center

• Local history collection archivist

• Lapham Meeting Room lighting and sound systems

• Intergenerational museum trips

• Parking lot construction and plantings

• Digitization project

• Children’s Story Circle renovation

• Martin Vogel Photography Gallery

• Arnold Saltzman Reading Room

To date, the Foundation has given over $1,500,000 to the library.

For a complete funding history, please call 516-883-4400 x180 or Info@pwlfoundation.org.

Enjoy this great story about a Foundation supported program Parent-Child Home Program

PCHP Parent Overcomes Barriers to Start a Delicious Business

Meet Blanka 

72835yBlanka was starting to believe that pursuing the American Dream would be much harder than she had anticipated.   At age 31, she found herself in a new country, with two young children, facing an ending marriage, struggling with a brain tumor, and single-handedly trying to raise a family on an extremely limited income.

Blanka came to the United States from Bolivia to further her education. “I wanted to better myself and fulfill my dreams,” Blanka explained, “I was determined to do whatever I had to do to be able to stay in this country and achieve my goals.” After graduating, Blanka needed to find work to ensure that her visa would stay valid and she could remain in the country. She was rejected several times before being hired by DJ Air Services, Inc. as a clerk.

Blanka constantly struggled with stereotyping and always felt left out of American culture. “I had to work extra hard because I had an accent. I had to fight to prove I’m capable.”

How PCHP Helped  
Eventually, Blanka got married, moved to Port Washington, NY, and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Nicholas. Being a first time mother with no family support was extremely difficult for Blanka, and she struggled with the cultural differences of raising a child in the United States. After becoming pregnant again, her marriage became quite troubled and ended in divorce, and Blanka felt even more isolated.  After the joy of the birth of her second son, Michael, Blanka was diagnosed with a brain tumor and was overcome with fear.

Despite the many challenges that Blanka faced, she remained determined to improve her life and give her children the opportunity to succeed. When she learned about The Parent-Child Home Program through the Port Washington Public Library, Blanka was eager to enroll.  She was actively engaged throughout the two years of the Program and credits PCHP to the positive changes in her parenting style. “Where I grew up there was not as much quality time between parents and their children because our culture didn’t stress the importance of engaged parenting,” she explained.

Blanka was also delighted to find a constant support system in the PCHP staff.  They referred her to various agencies, and gave her the knowledge and the resources to raise her children in American society and to cope with her personal and health problems. “The PCHP staff became my family. This Program brought me home when I was alone, and gave me the support I didn’t have in this country.”

Building a Brighter Future 
During her chemotherapy treatments Blanka started to lose her fine motor skills, so she started baking as self therapy and to stay active. Today, Blanka’s tumor is under control, and she has started her own business, Blanka’s Kitchen, where she makes delicious cake pops, cupcakes and other baked goods for any occasion. Blanka is still living happily in Port Washington as a single mother to two intelligent, energetic, and loving boys.

“Although I struggled in this country, I would not change a thing,” says Blanka, “I am happy. I’m so thankful for my two amazing sons, and I am so grateful that a program as wonderful as The Parent-Child Home Program exists and was there to hold my hand during the difficult journey.”

Both Nicholas, and his younger brother, Michael, are thriving in school, are full of energy, and are thoroughly enjoying American life. They continue to go to the library five times a week to read books, play on the computer, and say hello to the PCHP staff.
About Us
The Parent-Child Home Program’s (PCHP) nationwide network of program sites provides under-resourced families with the necessary tools to ensure their children achieve their greatest potential in school and in life. Since 1965 we have been assisting underserved communities in replicating and expanding our proven school readiness program that builds early parent-child verbal interaction and learning at home.   Through two years of bi-weekly visits by highly trained community-based early literacy specialists, PCHP provides families the skills, resources of books and educational toys, and support to help parents engage and teach their children. Almost 50 years of research shows that the program effectively increases school readiness, decreases the need for special education services before grade 3 by 50%, and increases participants’ high school graduation rates by over 30% – to the same level as their middle income peers.

 

Lieber Album 2, March 1916 Snow
Lieber Album 2, March 1916 Snow

Foundation Funds Digitization Project: Unique Library Collections Now Accessible to the Public

The Port Washington Library Foundation’s $10,000 grant to the library’s Local History Center funds an historic preservation project.

Thousands of photographs, postcards, maps, written documents and audio-taped interviews about life in Port Washington over the past 200 years are being captured electronically and made available via the library’s website.

The grant allowed the library to create a digital scanning station in its Local History Center. Under the direction of Elly Shodell, archivists prepare materials, enter data, caption, organize and digitize carefully selected examples from the library’s unique historical collections. The project benefits genealogists, researchers, students, teachers, authors, and all those interested in past and present people, places and events of Port Washington.

For More information about the Port Washington Library Foundation, or to make a donation to this project, please call 516-883-4400 x180 or Info@pwlfoundation.org.
http://www.pwpl.org/foundation/21-2/
www.pwpl.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2015-18
35556
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:HVTUA4Q77UDAUUQDQSSTIAPA572Q4MQE
<urn:uuid:fb0b70be-6fc5-4991-883d-761675e0f9cf>
2015-04-25T00:26:28Z
192.232.192.58
sha1:7DMU4XPBU67AAYOYZQR2OSMPPCFO22QB
<urn:uuid:1da47a7d-5f18-41d4-992b-76b90437b90d>
http://www.pwpl.org/foundation/21-2/
length
response
<urn:uuid:013b67c2-e68a-403d-9142-0da7b353554e>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-18
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for April 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf