Many foundations committed to promoting diversity focus on fundraising. While funding is critical, our organization was founded by educators with over 90 years of combined teaching experience. We saw a need to develop and distribute the resources parents and teachers should have to inspire and encourage minority children to reach whatever goals they set for themselves.
Our vision began with our first book, “Diverse Achievers: A Guide for Parents and Teachers on Using Children’s Literature to Promote Self-Esteem and an Understanding That Anyone Can Become An Achiever.” In the process of writing that book, we shaped what would become the mission of the Diverse Achievers Foundation.
The mission of the Foundation will include the following overall objectives:
- To promote tolerance, understanding, equality, and diversity.
- To encourage families, teachers and their students, and parents and their children to read selected children’s literature about diverse achievers and to discuss important questions raised by the literature.
- To provide resources for children to learn about diverse achievers who look like them and those who don’t look like them in order to show that anyone who works hard can be a diverse achiever.
- To build on this model so that readers within the subject group and readers within other groups can build on the accomplishments of diverse achievers to foster self-esteem, self-confidence, and optimism about their own potential and opportunity.
As teachers, we have witnessed firsthand the power of action. We founded this organization on our faith that, together, our efforts can make a real difference in the lives of our children.