Roanoke City Mayor, Sherman Lea proudly addressed the National Civic League Hall of Fame upon beautiful City of Roanoke, VA announced that: Roanoke has won seven All-America City Awards since 1952!
In 2012, Roanoke won the All-America City Award for its plan to improve children’s early educational outcomes, which we call the Star City Reads initiative and in 2017 won again for the progress achieved with Star City Reads. “We are so proud of this recognition, Lea continued, not only because it highlights the success of our City, but because Star City Reads is helping our children succeed in their education”. While these are reasons enough for Roanoke to be singled-out, we are stellar for a number of other reasons as well.
Roanoke is a thriving City of 100,000 people located in Virginia’s Blue Ridge, Lea added; natural beauty surrounds the city. Roanoke is the largest city on the Blue Ridge Parkway and the legendary Appalachian Trail is just minutes away. As a result, the outdoors is a big part of our quality of life. Residents and visitors alike enjoy easy access to hiking, biking, rivers, lakes, as well as more than 20 miles of greenways!
What really makes Roanoke stand out is our strategy to take advantage of opportunities to grow and strengthen our community through partnerships. Believing that an investment in our children’s education is an investment in our city’s future, one of the most important partnerships we have is “Star City Reads,” Roanoke’s Campaign for Grade-Level Reading initiative to improve third grade reading outcomes.
Led by Library Director Sheila Umberger, Star City Reads includes efforts to have children ready for kindergarten, to provide a summer enrichment program, to reduce absenteeism, and to engage parents. We work to put more books into the hands of children to boost reading abilities. Every child born in Roanoke receives a Roanoke Baby Book. In cooperation with our partners, since 2012 the City has given more than 120,000 books to children living in Roanoke.
Since Star City Reads began in 2012, we’ve learned it truly does take “the community.” Roanokers now understand that a child’s academic success isn’t just the responsibility of the schools and the libraries—everyone has a role. Also in 2012, we had six partners working on early literacy through Star City Reads. Now we have more than 30 community partners, ranging from the schools to theatre companies, medical providers, the symphony, the zoo, and even the local bus service.
In the City of Roanoke, one in three children live in poverty. These families struggle to make ends meet. Joining the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading opened our eyes to the day-to-day realities of this situation. Because of the work in the Campaign, we knew that hunger negatively affects a child’s ability to learn and retain information. So, in 2014, Roanoke launched a feeding program at one library branch. At Feed and Read, any child who walks in receives a free, USDA-approved meal and participates in brain-boosting activities like storytimes, word games, and health presentations.
The meals are provided by Feeding America Southwest Virginia, and the YMCA of Virginia’s Blue Ridge helps recruit volunteers to run the literacy activities. Since that first summer, we’ve expanded Feed and Read to every City library branch. The program offers afternoon meals six days a week during the school year, and lunches and snacks during the summer break.
In October, we began serving afterschool meals as well and between October and the end of May, we served more than 20,000 afterschool meals. Furthermore, since Feed and Read began in 2014, we have served more than 57,000 meals to children.
In conclusion, Mayor Lea, thanked many of the organizations and individuals who helped with the programs like Feed and Read possible. Among them were: Sheila Umberger, director of the Roanoke Public Libraries, the Roanoke Baby Book, and Star City Readers. For her work and impact on children, the American Library Association has bestowed upon her the prestigious Sullivan Award. Also recognized were Amber Lowery, Marissia Blankinship, Carlisie Parker and members of the Roanoke Public Libraries team for coordinating many of the programs. Also to City Manager Bob Cowell, and the staff, who support our citizens every day!
Thank you to my fellow City Council members our 30-plus Star City Reads coalition members, including Roanoke City Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Rita Bishop, and Roanoke’s Chief Science Officers for Human Development, Drs. Sharon and Craig Ramey, for their bold analysis of our data.
The Hall of Fame recognition does not mean that we’ve solved the problem; it just means we have found a way to impact it.
Because of our 2012 and 2017 All-America City Awards, we’ve learned so much about how poverty impacts a child’s life and that of our City. We will continue programs like Feed and Read because they are necessary and we will seek to understand and find ways to address the reasons children do not have access to healthy meals, as well as other necessities.
If we do this, it is our firm belief that programs like these will cause every child to be able to thrive in mind, body, and spirit.
This All-America City Hall of Fame Award will give the City of Roanoke even more momentum to make our City a place where everyone is able to flourish, stated Mayor Lea, ending his remarks with special thanks for this recognition of our work so far, while assuring the promise, “There’s more to come!
