Children’s Literacy Initiative (CLI) is no stranger to change. Over our nearly 35-year existence, we have gone from a bookfair supporting local teachers and children with quality literature to becoming a nationwide educational non-profit that impacts the lives and professions of over 70,000 students and more than 3,500 teachers per year. 

CLI has continued to grow and evolve, refining its approach and, recently, sharpening its mission to better reflect its work and purpose and meet the needs of school partners, teachers, and children it serves. As CLI strengthens its imprint as an anti-racist organization, it maintains the focus of transforming early literacy and learning for young children. 

Over the next few months, CLI will unveil more details about some of the exciting new changes and opportunities across the organization, including a newly revamped online learning platform, a grant from the Gates Foundation to evaluate our work in preschools, and a collaboration with CLI Literacy Ambassador and New York Times Best-Selling author, Jason Reynolds. You can see the first fruits of this collaboration this month at our annual fundraiser, Raise a Glass for Reading, on Thursday, May 19. Visit cli.org/rgr22 for more information. 

CLI remains committed to dismantling structural racism by providing Black and Latinx children with the anti-racist early literacy instruction, support, and advocacy needed to create equity in education. And we look forward to the road ahead.  

As more details become available regarding the search, we will share these updates with you via email and our website.