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On July 1, the Library of Congress will host the fifth of six webinars featuring the 2025 Literacy Awards Program winners and honorees. This webinar will feature Successful Practices Honorees whose work exemplifies Honoring Storytelling and Building Literacy …
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We thank Hana Beckerle of the Library of Congress for this post.
On July 1, the Library of Congress will host the fifth of six webinars featuring the 2025 Literacy Awards Program winners and honorees. This webinar will feature Successful Practices Honorees whose work exemplifies Honoring Storytelling and Building Literacy Skills. To register, please visit this page.
The Literacy Awards Program team is pleased to share the information below about the honoree programs and the panelists participating on June 10.
NABU
Panelist bio:
Camille Park is the Chief Executive Officer of NABU Global Inc., a mission-driven ed-tech publisher transforming how children around the world learn to read. She leads NABU’s global expansion delivering culturally relevant, bilingual storybooks through digital and print platforms across Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States. Camille brings a background in global partnerships, technology, and education innovation, with a focus on building scalable literacy infrastructure that improves learning outcomes at scale.
What is your organization’s literacy focus?
NABU focuses on expanding access to culturally relevant, mother-tongue reading materials and building the infrastructure needed for children to develop foundational literacy skills at scale. Our work integrates content creation, multi-modal distribution, and learning measurement to support children, families, and educators.
How do you define literacy?
We define literacy as the ability to read with understanding, confidence, and connection to one’s identity. It is a foundational life skill that enables learning, participation in society, and long-term opportunity.
NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge
Panelist bio:
Janet Woojeong Lee (she/her) is a producer at NPR covering education, youth and families. She helps tell character-driven, sound-rich stories that illustrate how policy impacts real people. Based in Brooklyn, she also runs NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge, a national podcasting program for middle, high school and college students. Each year, her team listens to thousands of student-produced podcasts and shares those stories on the radio and across NPR platforms. Janet loves working with students too. She previously taught audio journalism at Columbia Journalism School, and has loved being a part of the Asian American Journalists Association’s summer camp as its audio instructor.
What is your organization’s literacy focus?
The NPR Student Podcast Challenge seeks to elevate the voices of young people and to bring their stories and their voices to our audience, but also to introduce students to audio storytelling, journalism and media literacy by turning classrooms into recording studios and written assignments into podcasts and audio stories.
How do you define literacy?
For us, literacy means helping students understand not only the sources of news and information they are exposed to but also understanding how that media comes to them and the ethics and principles that go into creating it.
Philadelphia Writing Project
Panelist bio:
A Philadelphia Writing Project teacher consultant since 2017, Barrett Rosser, EdD, is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education & Professional Development at Morgan State University. Her research interests include Black feminism, Black girlhood, practitioner inquiry, and expansive notions of literacy.
What is your organization’s literacy focus?
The Philadelphia Writing Project (PhilWP) is a network connecting PreK–University and out-of-school-time leaders working to advance writing and the teaching of writing across grade levels and disciplines in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. A site of the National Writing Project, PhilWP has served Philadelphia schools since 1986. PhilWP offers ongoing professional learning opportunities, workshops, and courses throughout the year for educators, families, and youth. Members of our network are leaders in their schools, communities, and the field of education. Each year, new teacher-leaders join the PhilWP network by attending the Invitational Summer Institute. They work in classrooms and other education spaces, supporting young people as writers and learners.
How do you define literacy?
Literacy is life. Literacy is meaning-making. This meaning-making usually happens through texts. A text can be thought of as an artifact, an event, or even our body, holding meaning for some readers, viewers, or listeners. Books and other traditional writing count as texts; however, texts also include movies, plays, songs, podcasts, memes, photos, clothing, and paintings. Through reading, writing, listening, speaking, and other modalities and literacies, we generate meaning. To draw on Paulo Freire, we read the word and the world. Literacy is the way we write, rewrite, and restory the texts of our lives. Literacy is life.
Start A Library Trust’s The National Read Aloud Initiative
Panelist bio:
Evelyne Mwandia is the Executive Director of Start A Library Trust, a social impact organization advancing foundational literacy and life skills among marginalized children in rural and urban informal settlements in Kenya. She has led the establishment of 319 school libraries and community-centred literacy programs that promote reading for pleasure, child voice, and equitable learning outcomes. Evelyne is a literacy advocate, author of Silenced Voices, and works at the intersection of education systems strengthening, community engagement, and policy reform; she is also a mother of three and a wife.
What is your organization’s literacy focus?
Start a Library Trust (SAL) focuses on advancing foundational literacy and life skills for children aged 4–15 in rural and urban informal settlements across Kenya. We create vibrant, sustainable learning ecosystems by establishing model school libraries, training school communities, and implementing programs that promote reading for pleasure, authorship, and equitable learning outcomes.
How do you define literacy?
The ability to read, write, think critically, communicate effectively, and apply life skills, creativity, and self-expression to engage meaningfully with the world.
Please see recordings of the previous webinars in this series on this page.
