Application – Indigo Love of Reading Foundation

2024 Adopt a School Application

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Section C: Tell us about your school community

Often, a community’s demographic composition can impact student literacy. The purpose of this section is to determine whether this is the case for your school and to allow you to convey your school community’s literacy journey to our Foundation and supporting Indigo stores.

Generally, we consider a “high-needs” school to be one that is challenged by various socio-economic factors. These factors can include for example, a higher-than-average number of students from single-parent or low-income families, a high level of transience amongst the student population, or a high number of students who face linguistic barriers to learning.

1. Explain in as much detail as possible, the literacy challenges and opportunities at your school. In doing so please cite any relevant local or national research, test scores (reading inventories, qualitative/quantitative surveys, report card data, etc.) to support your current reality.**

2. Please speak to how the demographic landscape of your school community may have impacted your reason to apply for the Adopt A School program. In doing so, please cite any relevant information to support your statements and provide context as to how these factors present barriers or challenges to literacy within your community.*

Some examples of information (factors) you can provide that help to paint a picture of the scope of need faced by students and families in your school community:

Average Median family income within your school community
The percentage (%) of lone-parent (also referred to as single-parent) families in your school community
The percentage (%) of students in your school community that speak a language other than French or English in the home
The percentage (%) of students in your school community that self-identify as Indigenous (I.e. Aboriginal, First Nations, Métis, or Inuit)
The percentage (%) of people/families in your school community who have a post-secondary certificate, diploma, or degree (e.g. university, trade school, college, etc.)
The percentage (%) of people who moved from one residence to another at least once in the last year (e.g., family moved to a new apartment)
The percentage (%) of your students’ families needing financial support to buy school supplies and/or enable their child to participate in school activities (e.g. field trips and clubs)?
The percentage (%) of students that access nutrition programs through your school
Any special learning designations or indexes such as the TDSB Learning Opportunities Index (LOI) that apply to your school. When citing a special learning designation or index, please ensure you are describing the criteria that define the designation.

*For any metrics provided you must state the source of this information. This can be derived from a number of different sources, eg. Census data (Statistics Canada) family/caregiver surveys, school board data, etc.

Section F: Amplifying Awareness and Connecting with your Community

One of the main goals of the Adopt A School program is for our Indigo stores and high-needs schools to connect with their surrounding community to generate awareness about the Canadian literacy crisis and about the challenges schools and educators face.
A large part of what contributes to fundraising success during the run of the Adopt A School campaign rests on building firm partnerships between schools and their supporting Indigo retail partners in executing a unified vision.

This section of the application will give you a chance to express your ideas and capacity for effectively partnering with a neighboring (or remote) store to communicate your story, as well as promote awareness-raising activities within your own school and parent community.

Question 1 is only applicable to previous recipient of the Adopt A School grant.

1a. What was the greatest change you saw in your school based on the funding that you have received through the Adopt A School program in previous year(s)?*

Feel free to use this section to tell us about changes in areas such as student attitudes towards reading, sparking conversations around diversity, equity and inclusion, changes in reading literacy achievement, etc.

1b. Did you face any challenges in implementing the Adopt A School program?*

Yes

Please discuss the challenges in impleneting the Adopt A School Program.*

c. Why do you want to see the Adopt A School return to your school?*

2. Partnering with an Indigo store: How would you partner with a neighborhood or remotely-located store to bring your school’s story to life?*

Examples for neighborhood partnerships:

Student can produce artwork, bookmarks, etc. for customer donations
Producing video or other social media content illuminating your school culture and literacy needs

Examples of remote partnerships:

Working with a store to produce a video for in-store presentation or social media purposes
Written letters from students/teachers/parents that can be printed and shared
Providing photos (with permissions in place) to help tell your story

3. Online Fundraising and Awareness:

Schools that are chosen to participate are required to generate awareness of the program and participate in online fundraising outreach with the help of their partner store.

NOTE: schools without a social media presence are not disqualified from participation, however, they will be asked to submit an alternate engagement plan.

Please provide links to the social media accounts that your school actively uses.

Press the + icon to add additional social media links.

4. Generating awareness within your own School and parent community: How would you raise awareness for the Adopt A School program with your members of your School and/or parent community?*

Some ideas:

Reading challenges: engage students in a school-wide reading challenge or students and parents in a home-reading challenge
Fundraisers: School-wide read-a-thons, donation jars in every classroom, etc.
Hosting a virtual Literacy Night at your school (run in part with your school’s Parent council) to drive awareness of your school’s literacy
Connecting with a local high school or Private school to help with fundraising for your school (many high-school students participate in volunteer projects as part of their graduation requirements or participate in Co-op community-based programs)

5. Share your story: Please provide us with a short blurb about your school and its literacy needs to use when creating an online fundraising page that you will share with your school’s supporters.

2024 Adopt a School Application

Section A: School Information

Principal Information

Secondary Contact Information

Additional Information

Section B: Selecting your partner store

Section C: Tell us about your school community

Section D: Current access to books

Section E: Enhancing reading literacy at your school

Section F: Amplifying Awareness and Connecting with your Community