Children from Campus East and Buffalo Schools Superintendent Marion Canedo will be among those on hand at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 13, as representatives of Verizon donate $25,000 and books to Buffalo State College's Project FLIGHT to help fight illiteracy.

The school children will receive teddy bears with backpacks filled with books collected by the Telephone Pioneers, active and retired Verizon and other telephone employees who volunteer their time and effort to fight illiteracy through Project FLIGHT and a number of other community initiatives.

Maureen Rasp-Glose, community development director for Verizon, will make the presentation to Canedo and Project FLIGHT co-directors and founders Dr. Betty J. Cappella, chair of Buffalo State's Educational Foundations Department, and Dr. Geraldine Bard, professor of English. The presentation will take place in Project FLIGHT's Western New York BookBank, in the Campbell Student Union on the campus at 1300 Elmwood Ave.

"I can't express enough how grateful I am to Verizon and Project FLIGHT. The donation of these books by Verizon and their incorporation into directed family literacy programs will have a tremendous benefit for our students and their families," Canedo said.

"The most effective way to prepare students to succeed is to involve the entire family in the learning process," she continued. "This initiative seeks to get families reading together and when that happens on a regular basis, the children are the big winners."

"Literacy is the fundamental building block for communication," noted Verizon's Rasp-Glose. "For a corporation dedicated to the delivery of communication, supporting Project FLIGHT is a perfect fit for the Verizon Foundation. More importantly, the families of Western New York will reap the benefits of reading."

The $25,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation in Western New York, will be used for Project FLIGHT's staffing and educational programming, to sustain its Western New York BookBank and to obtain books for third- and fourth-grade students who attend Buffalo's at-risk schools under registration review, including Schools 4, 11, 44, 69, 71 and Hamlin Park School 74.

Hamlin Park School Principal Frances Wilson will accept books for children who attend her school.

The books to be donated on Wednesday were collected by Verizon's Telephone Pioneers. Fighting illiteracy is Verizon's top funding priority, Rasp-Glose said. The Verizon Foundation established its national program, Verizon Reads, in 1999 to fight illiteracy by creating awareness, raising funds and encouraging collaboration among literacy providers. The local volunteers, Rasp-Glose said, have been active in the fight. Verizon's Telephone Pioneers have been volunteering to help Project FLIGHT for more than two years, Bard said.

"The volunteers have been just wonderful," she added. "It's gratifying to see their hard work translate to real results for the children whose lives they touch." Bard estimated that the Telephone Pioneers have collected and donated hundreds of books to children in the two years they have worked with Project FLIGHT.

The Verizon Foundation is the 10th largest corporate foundation in the nation with assets of $70 million. Other major funding priorities of the Verizon Foundation include workforce development, community technology and employee volunteerism.

Project FLIGHT, established in 1994, is a grassroots family literacy program that increases community awareness and provides empowerment opportunities for children, families and the elderly through 13 initiatives designed to combat illiteracy, under-education, violence and impoverishment affecting women, children and families.

Project FLIGHT combines four basic illiteracy-fighting tools - adult hildren, parent training and the intergenerational parent/child learning relationship - with literacy programs for school-aged children to provide direct services and resources to aid service providers and individuals in need.