The Jester & Pharley Phund

Our medical program - Smiles for Kids With Cancer - contributes to achieving our exempt purpose by bringing educational and emotional support to hospitalized children and providing health-care professionals with powerful tools to raise the spirits of ill children and their families with the N.Y. Times best-selling "The Jester Has Lost His Jingle" children's book. The book is available in its original English edition as well as in a bilingual English/Spanish edition. To date, 69,917 books have been donated to over 400 hospitals, including 5,852 books during this fiscal year. Support for this program comes from foundations, businesses, civic groups and individuals, with many donors honoring the memory of loved ones. Given limited storage space at medical centers, "Jester" books are distributed on an ongoing basis throughout the year according to each hospital's needs. Expenses for this program include the printing and personalizing of each bookplate acknowledging the donor(s) of each gift book and Jester & Pharley Doll as well as the cost of goods, communication, storage, packaging and shipping. Hospitals and recipient families have particularly appreciated the donation of "Jester" books for their pediatric patients in 2022-23 because the pandemic has often resulted in young patients being isolated from families and friends. " 'Jester Has Lost His Jingle' books are treasured by our patients and families, many of whom face a myriad of socioeconomic challenges, especially during times of crisis," reported Dr. Niloufar Tehrani, Director of the Primary Care Clinic at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, CA. "The beautiful story and message from the book can greatly encourage a child who is dealing with a significant illness. Thank you very much for thinking of our patients."

Our literacy programs increase elementary students' interest in reading - opening the door to reading achievement and future academic accomplishments. Following inspiring assemblies, students participate in a Jester Read-A-Thon that generates the donation of "The Jester Has Lost His Jingle" books and Jester & Pharley Dolls to hospitalized children in their community. In the process, students get hooked on reading - raising grade-level reading, test scores, fluency and comprehension while developing growing empathy for others. When students discover they can help sick kids simply by reading, they dive into the project with gusto, boosting their own literacy while reading to bring smiles to patients, many of whom are low-income and have few, if any, books in their homes. The result is two-fold: inspiring a new generation of young readers while bringing hope and encouragement to ill children. Altogether, during the past 22 years, students have read a total of 54,756,032 pages to help ill children benefit from "The Jester's" messages of self-empowerment, perseverance and humor. Expenses for these programs include the printing and personalizing of each bookplate acknowledging the donor(s) of each gift book and doll as well as the cost of project development, assemblies, communication, goods, storage, packaging, transportation and shipping. A. Reading Makes A Difference (RMD) We bring this sponsor-supported literacy program to low-income schools, especially those with many English learners. The program helps further educational equity among minority, disenfranchised students coping with poverty, social isolation, learning loss and negative effects of Covid19. The participating school receives a set of three Jester & Pharley Phund educator-developed Jester Enrichment Manuals that complement state standards and a copy of the hardcover bilingual English/Spanish "Jester" for each classroom. Phund personnel and volunteers provide a meaningful PowerPoint presentation with motivating assemblies for all students that expand their interest in reading - furthering academic achievement and compassion. Support for this program comes from foundations, businesses, civic groups and individuals. We have successfully transitioned our previous on-site program to a new, hybrid virtual format, offering a pandemic-safe resource to support literacy development across demographics, even taking advantage of a digital format to host a Zoom Q&A with The Jester's Mom. The virtual session with Barbara Saltzman, the late author's mother, sparks intense conversations with students about reading, writing, illness and the challenges faced by author-artist David Saltzman, who died of cancer in 1990 at 22. Students see parallels from Covid's impact on them to cancer's impact on the author-artist. At the request of administrators and teachers, we have expanded our focus on Social Emotional Learning (SEL) so that students and their families can benefit even more from the author's central messages of hope, resilience, perseverance, humor and optimism during this unsettling time. While the pandemic reduced the number of schools able to take advantage of our on-site program during this fiscal year, schools participating on Zoom found that their students progressed. In the face of the pandemic's obstacles, our program offers key tools in pushing back against these cascading effects. One Los Angeles-area Title I teacher participating on Zoom said her students did not regress during the pandemic - they progressed: "Students felt motivated to read more." "Throughout this event, students start checking out books more than they usually do," said the librarian at Jefferson Elementary in Compton, which has participated in the program for 12 years. "Even when the event ends, the students still continuously check out books and like to test themselves on how much they can read. We are glad this has been a part of the children's lives because it not only encourages reading but also awareness of patients in the hospital." In the fiscal year 2022-23, the 19 underserved schools enthusiastically participating in our RMD program read 1,331,767 pages, resulting in 550 "Jester" books and 475 Jester & Pharley Dolls donated to hospitals in their communities. B. Reading To Give (RTG) Students from middle-income elementary schools, inspired by "The Jester,X create a Jester Read-A-Thon. They read in their free time, raising funds to donate "Jester" books and Jester & Pharley Dolls to local pediatric patients. Although the RTG program didn't take place in the fiscal year 2022-2023, we anticipate schools joining this project again soon and in future years. We are proud to continue to fulfill and expand our educational mission with "The Jester Has Lost His Jingle" as our inspiring centerpiece. A graduate student at Children's Literature Centre at Frostburg State University, MD, summed up the book's time-honored ability to motivate children: "When I was a child, my grandmother read this wonderful book to me when I would go visit her. I asked for it to be read over and over. It's one of my personal favorites with a beautiful message of hope and joy. I hope that it helps more children find joy during these difficult days."