The Foundation supports efforts to expand educational opportunities at all levels. We are particularly interested in programs that:

• Encourage a love of learning early, before children reach kindergarten
• Motivate students to achieve and gain the skills that allow them to reach their academic and career goals, including vocational training
• Increase educational choice through charter schools and scholarships to private secondary schools, vocational schools, colleges and universities
• Encourage girls and young women to prepare for and achieve careers in math, science and technology
• Strengthen the teaching profession through technology training and other professional development opportunities

Featured Grants:

Raising A Reader | www.pcf.org/raising_reader/program.html

Raising A Reader® is a take-home book bag program that promotes daily "book cuddling" between parents and their children from birth to age 5, cultivating a shared story experience that fosters a love of reading important to school success. It reaches the toughest, most critical population: low income families where parents are poor readers or do not speak English well. Six independent evaluations show that Raising A Reader significantly improves family reading behavior and kindergarten readiness. Parents in the program showed a 33% increase in the time spent sharing stories with their children, and Spanish-speaking families increased their use of public library services by 56%.

Currently, the Raising A Reader program is being offered to child care providers and their agencies across the nation. The program is designed to be easy and enjoyable for busy families. Friendly and accessible, Raising A Reader inspires even illiterate or limited English-speaking families to gather around a book with their children and fall in love with reading. The Morgan Family Foundation supports high impact programs that prepare children for kindergarten.

Raising A Reader is a Social Venture Fund of the Center for Venture Philanthropy, a program of the Peninsula Community Foundation.

Earn While You Learn, Krause Center for Innovation at Foothill College | www.foothill.edu/kci

The mission of the Center for Innovation is to create a regional center in Silicon Valley to empower educators and students to dramatically improve learning outcomes through technology and the scholarship of learning. The Center encourages collaboration and mentoring of teachers with their peers on "Best Practices" in lesson plan development across grade levels and curriculum areas both on-line and in-person. It also provides access to research and development in up-to-date teaching methodology to meet the various needs and learning styles of today's students.

Earn While You Learn is a year-long project-based learning program available to San Francisco Bay Area teachers. Teachers are selected through a competitive application process. Participating teachers earn continuing education units as well as a stipend upon completion of the program. Teachers learn models of pedagogy and curriculum for technology integration, strategies to maximize technology integration for student learning, and best practices for integrating the Internet, word processing, data organization and multimedia into their curriculum.

The Morgan Family Foundation is committed to supporting professional development programs to strengthen the teaching profession.