Community Outreach
Please Touch Museum prides itself on its scope of community programming and ongoing efforts to assess, design and implement programs that meet the evolving needs of children and families. The museum is committed to serving children of all socio-economic backgrounds. We do this by not only educating children but those who nurture their development – their parents, caregivers and teachers.
The museum has received numerous awards for its community outreach, including:
2002 Institute of Museum and Library Services’ National Award for Museum Service honored our community programs and record of public service.
2003 Coming Up Taller Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museums and Library Services honored the ACES Program
2004 Promising Practice Award from the Association of Children’s Museums and the MetLife Foundation honored the ACES program.
Parkside Neighborhood Coalition
Please Touch Museum’s Community Service Division has been working with community-based organizations in the Parkside neighborhood to establish support services for families that promote the mental health and general wellbeing of parents and young children. Coalition partners include Please Touch Museum, the Parkside Association, Millenium Baptist Church and Parkside Recovery.
Family Programming
Piloted in 1990, the Community Partners program is the foundation for all of our community programs. The goal of the program is to reach under-served, non-traditional museum audiences and put our messages of learning through play into practice. The program includes interactive parent-child play sessions designed for families served by local social service agencies. Free museum memberships are given to families completing the program. The Community Partners Program is made possible with the support of the Dolfinger McMahon Foundation and Citizens Charitable Foundation.
Parent Empowered By Play (PEP) provides interactive learning techniques, personal development and parenting skills workshops. In addition, the program offers parent/child play sessions, museum visits and upon completion of the program, families are provided with memberships to the museum.
Youth Programming
ACES is Please Touch Museum’s work based learning, enrichment and mentoring program for teenagers from inner city Philadelphia Public High Schools. Students enter as freshmen and graduate as seniors developing an expertise in public speaking, time management, presentation planning and preparation through research driven projects. The goal of this four year program is to enable students to successfully transition from high school to higher education. The ACES program is made possible with the support of the Lincoln Financial Group Foundation, The Comcast Foundation and Philadelphia Youth Network.
Creative Parenting for Teens was developed in response to the School District of Philadelphia’s partnership with Communities in Schools’ E.L.E.C.T. Cradle to the Classroom initiative. Please Touch Museum compliments the School District’s life skills training and classroom learning with parenting workshops that help young parents support the healthy development of their children.
Teacher Programming
Please Touch Museum offers a variety of on and off-site curriculum support, staff development, and parent enrichment workshops, including Learning Through Play, Effective Communication, Heads Up Reading (Early/Emergent Literacy), and others. Participating early childhood educators then receive the continuing education credits needed to maintain their licenses and education credentials.
School Readiness
The museum’s School Readiness project is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Please Touch Museum’s Kindergarten Mixer (a part of the city-wide School Readiness Intiative) is an event that mobilizes families to prepare their young children for a successful transition from pre-k, preschool or Head Start classrooms into kindergarten.
Books to Know, Books to Grow, sponsored by the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation and Target, is a literature based program helping preschoolers, ages 3 to 5 build their literacy, math and art skills by reading. Working with both teachers and students this program helps to increase preschooler’s vocabulary, supply teachers with activities that strengthen their students’ basic skills and builds and interest and excitement for learning and getting them ready for kindergarten. All of the activities in this program correlate with the School District of Philadelphia’s pre-kindergarten curriculum.
The goal of Project Play is to promote quality childcare and school readiness to an often overlooked segment of Philadelphia’s early childhood community – family daycare home providers and the children and parents they serve. Through a series of professional development trainings and family play sessions, this program works to demonstrate the museum’s messages of learning through play.