The VanderHuff Foundation is currently focused on improving child literacy in the Tampa, Florida area.  Our current projects include:

Birthday Book Project

The Birthday Book Project delivers books to children in Tampa’s least privileged schools for their birthday.  These books are given to the children as gifts they can keep.  In many cases, this is these are the first books the child has ever had and in other cases, these are the first books of any kind kept in the home.  The books are reading-level appropriate.  In some cases, the gift books are bilingual with English on one side of the page and Spanish on the other.  For children where English is a second language and where adults in the home are not fluent in English, the impact of such books can be twofold: First the adults may, for the first time, be able to help their child with reading.  When there might be an English-only book in the home, adults cannot help with reading it if they are not fluent in reading English.  Second, the books can help with English literacy at home for the adults.  Being able to read the English and Spanish at the same time can make a big impact on literacy regardless of age.

The Birthday Book Project is focused on children in elementary school from Kindergarten through grade 5.