Greater Austin Area My Brother’s Keeper (GAAMBK) is an offshoot of the national movement My Brother’s Keeper. The initiative, created by former President Barack Obama, addresses the challenges that young men of color face.
The GAAMBK initiative kicked off on March 8, 2015 at SXSWedu. This initiative is a collaboration among city, county, university, and other organizations in the greater Austin community.
Patrick Patterson, chair of GAAMBK early education and reading levels subcommittee, said, “Shortly following the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s national initiative, we gathered Austin educators, city and county officials, philanthropists, community and non-profit leaders.”
Patrick added that the SXSWedu panel had a dynamic discussion on the lives of our area boys and young men of color. The initiative works to enhance the health, well-being and prosperity for boys and men of color by helping them reach their full potential through solutions which eliminate disparities and create equity.
Books have the capacity to contribute to a child’s cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development. GAAMBK’s early childhood committee collected 5,000 books to giveaway. The goal is to provide these books to young boys of color in the Austin area.
Through a partnership with BookSpring and other local education and early literacy organizations, GAAMBK will address the issue of kindergarten readiness. Between the ages of 0 to 5, a critical developmental milestone occurs, children begin to learn social, emotional, and early literacy skills.
E3 Alliance reported that low-income boys from African-American, Latino, and Native American backgrounds are statistically more likely to be behind on this milestone than other groups of children upon entering school.
In order to close this gap, GAAMBK and BookSpring are providing families with young boys of color with 20 free children’s books to build their home library and tips on how to read aloud to a young child.
For more information contact Mariela Rodriguez, BookSpringGo Director, at (512) 472-1791 x 102 or mariela.rodriguez@bookspring.org.
