What We Do

Teachers Award

• HMESF Donates Libraries to Helene Marks Award Winners, March 2009

Helene Marks was very passionate about the Terri Lynne Lokoff Foundation’s Teacher Awards program (the Teacher of the Year award was renamed the Helene Marks Award upon her passing). Since the award funds teachers' proposals for innovative classroom projects, she really felt her work was having a direct, positive impact on children's lives.  HMESF decided to honor Helene's passion by contributing the HMESF Library Collection to each award recipient.

Library Initiative

• HMESF Library Intiative Continues, July 2009
• HMESF Donates Libraries to Centers in NYC, September 2008

The Helene Marks Early Start Foundation (HMESF) provides the Helene Marks Library, a collection of age-appropriate books, to early-age child care and early childhood education programs that offer exemplary programs for children ranging in ages from birth to three years old. This age is one of the most critical ages during which children are developing physically, mentally, and emotionally.  A child’s brain is developing and growing at a far faster rate than at any other time in the child’s life; this is the time during which the foundations for all later learning are being laid. Thus, it is important for children to be in an enriching environment with the experiences and supports that they need.  The types of environments in which children spend their time and the people with whom they spend their time are strongly linked with the outcome of their later lives. One of the main environments in which many children spend their days is at a childcare center. Within the world of childcare, there is a wide range as related to the quality of care offered. Even for those centers with effective caregivers and a strong structure, a lack of resources can prove to be an impediment to the success of the program. This is where HMESF is able to step in and give a hand to those high-quality centers that are lacking sufficient resources.

HMESF felt that a first donation to all centers should be a library.  In addition to each of the centers need for more children’s books, we felt that investing in literacy would prove to be beneficial to the children of the center.  Interacting with books at early ages is a critical step in the development of pre-literacy skills, which, in turn, is the foundation upon which reading abilities are built.  By interacting with books, children learn the correct manner in which to hold a book and that the reading of English is done front to back and left to right.  Most importantly, children begin to understand the basic concept that print carries with it meaning.

In addition to the academic benefits of having access to books, children can form connections over shared reading experiences with their classmates, their teachers and with their families.  Reading and having access to the same set of books, allows for children in these centers to create a shared world and to allow them to create connections with one another that they may have not been able to do without the catalyst of the shared story.