Thank You to the Four Who Said Yes
Thank you to the sponsors of the 4th Annual "It's Cool to Learn" Literacy Initiative
Every program has a part nobody photographs.
Before the first child walks into the room, before the kits are packed and the chairs are set out, someone has to decide this is worth paying for. Someone has to put their name on it.
This year, four organizations did.
On September 12, 2026, the 4th Annual "It's Cool to Learn" Literacy Initiative comes to the Harrison Museum of African American Culture in Roanoke, Virginia. The goal is 200 children, each walking out with an educational kit of their own.
That happens because of the organizations below. Not in a ceremonial way. In the practical way. The materials, the space, the books that go home in children's hands.
Here is who they are, and what they do when they are not funding us.
She was twenty-two years old, working out of her own apartment, doing taxes for family and friends on the side.
That was 1980. By 1992, Lillian T. Bowman had opened her doors in Brooklyn, where she served that community face to face for decades. The firm recently moved remote, not to step back but to reach further. Tax preparation, IRS representation, notary and signing services, and clerical work, now available wherever her clients are.
Here is the part that matters for our purposes. Over the decades, Lillian's has hired and trained young people from that same neighborhood, including students out of youth employment programs and career schools. Betting on a young person is not a new thing at that firm. It is the whole history of it.
AAUW St. Augustine (FL) Branch
Picture an eighth grade girl who has never met a woman who does science for a living.
Now picture her spending a week on a college campus surrounded by them, taking a daily core class in technology or engineering, running hands-on labs, touring a real STEM workplace.
That is Tech Trek, and since 2014 the St. Augustine branch of the American Association of University Women has sent more than 121 St. Johns County girls to it. The branch also awards scholarships and convenes public forums on education policy and civic life. Nationally, AAUW works to break down the educational and economic barriers facing women and girls. Locally, in St. Augustine, that work has a number attached to it, and the number keeps growing.
Seventy-three years.
The Roanoke Public Library Foundation was chartered in 1953, and its purpose has not changed since: make sure the Roanoke Public Libraries have what they need. It is a 501(c)(3) that receives gifts, endowments, and bequests and channels them into library programs, with donors able to designate exactly what their gift supports. Reading programs. Early literacy work. The facilities themselves.
That is three generations of Roanoke children who walked into a library that was a little better stocked than it would have been otherwise, and almost none of them knew why.
When "It's Cool to Learn" arrives in Roanoke this September, it lands on ground this Foundation has been tending since before most of us were born. They are not just a sponsor here. They are the hometown.
Principled Behavior Consultants
Every teacher knows the child who cannot sit still long enough to learn anything.
Not a bad kid. Not an unwilling one. A child whose body and brain are working against the room they are sitting in, and who gets labeled long before anyone figures out why.
That child is the work at Principled Behavior Consultants. Founded by Dr. Zachary Bird, a doctoral-level Board Certified Behavior Analyst, PBC provides behavior analytic consultation through a team of master's and PhD-level licensed behavior analysts. Classroom management workshops for educators. Systematic instruction built around IEP objectives. Ten-week social skills groups where young people practice building real friendships. Parent training for the hours that happen at home.
We hand children books. PBC works on the conditions that let a child actually receive one.
Four Fields, Three States, One Idea
A tax office in Brooklyn. A women's advocacy branch in St. Augustine. A library foundation in Roanoke. A behavior consulting practice in Virginia.
On paper, all but one are in the children's literacy business. There is no obvious reason any of them should be funding the same program in the same year.
Except they are all in the same business, if you look at it right. A woman who trains young people from her neighborhood. A branch that sends eighth grade girls to science camp. A foundation that keeps library shelves full. A practice that helps a child sit in a classroom and take something in.
Every one of them is working on the same thing from a different direction. Making sure a child gets a fair shot.
That is what "It's Cool to Learn" is for. And that is why these four made sense as partners.
Two Hundred Kits, and Counting
The goal for September 12 is 200 children served, and $15,000 raised to make it happen.
Twenty-five dollars sponsors one child's literacy kit. One child, one name on a list, one bag of materials that goes home and stays home.
You can sponsor a kit at givebutter.com/its-cool-to-learn-4th-annual-literacy-month-initiative.
If your organization wants its name on the flyer alongside the four above, email info@diasporawhispers.com. There is still time before September.
And to Lillian's Professional Services, AAUW St. Augustine, the Roanoke Public Library Foundation, and Principled Behavior Consultants: thank you. The children who walk into the Harrison Museum this September will not know your names. But they will walk out with something because you were there.