Over the next month, Jumpstart’s volunteer Corps will don their red Jumpstart T-shirts and enter preschool classrooms around the country to meet their partner children for the first time. These first encounters will set the stage for yearlong relationships that will build children’s self-esteem, resiliency, and trust. Children will also begin to find joy and meaning through the storybooks that anchor Jumpstart’s curriculum. Ezra Jack Keats’ Dreams, for example, shows a young boy discovering how something small, like a paper mouse, can cast a shadow that appears larger than life. Stories like this can help inspire children to imagine a world beyond what they can see.
At Jumpstart, we believe that every child in the U.S. has the right to any future they can imagine. Over the past month, that belief has been tested by the recent decision to end DACA, jeopardizing the futures of many young men and women — some even part of our volunteer Corps — who entered the country as young children and cannot remember any home but America.
I hope you will continue to join us in building a world in which every child in the U.S. has the right to DREAM, no matter their economic circumstances, and no matter their country of birth.
With gratitude,
Naila Bolus
President & CEO
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