 So true! A child who grows up reading is enriched as a young person and will usually automatically take to reading as one of many outlets for the imagination and stress relief, as well as the pursuit of new knowledge for the remainder of their life. It is very important to read and share quality books with children from the time they are born. Younger children, as they grow, often relate to the main characters in a story and play out their roles and view these characters as heroes whose behaviors they try to emulate. They idealize their favorite authors- think J.K. Rowling, Dr. Suess, or Roald Dahl. They dream about their future and begin to mentally plan for it. Feeding the brain with information from different genres, cultures, and even languages during this phase of life helps a child base their aspirations on hope, potential and promise. Reading can shape their life by giving them a mental map of where they can go and how to get there.
Each week at thirteen shelters for families suffering the traumas of homelessness and domestic violence, Reading Enriches All Children (REACH) Volunteer Readers provide reading programs and free new books for our area’s most vulnerable citizens, homeless children. These amazing kids receive one hour of uninterrupted story sharing with a dedicated group of individuals whose goal it is to make reading fun and inviting. The volunteers help pave the way for these youngsters to shape their own ideas and hopefully their future. All of the children receive a bag of new school supplies and reading incentives and two new books at each session to build a home library. When their shelter stay is complete, they take their new books to their new home.
A child growing up in chronic poverty develops a vocabulary of approximately 500 words, where a child growing up in a home where at least one parent is a working professional or college student, has a vocabulary of approximately 1500 words. This leads children to be stronger readers, communicators and higher performing in language comprehension and development. E.D. Hirsch, Jr. in Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge – of Words and the World said, “A high-performing first-grader knows about twice as many words as a low-performing one and as these students go through the grades, the differential gets magnified. REACH provides opportunities and resources for the most at-risk children and families in our community to engage in positive reading and literacy experiences and to close this “differential.” Children are reading and being read to every week, parents are learning the importance of sharing stories with their kids and together, they are developing stronger vocabularies just by listening and practicing in a fun and exciting environment.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, homeless families are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population with the average age of a homeless person locally being between 9-11 years old. Reading Enriches All Children works to reach children who are the most at-risk. Our goal is to help them develop a lifelong love of reading, so they will increase their opportunities and ultimately their life chances. Research has shown that avid readers stand out from the rest because of improved cognitive abilities. They can think creatively. It improves their grasping power. It makes them better analyzers and problem solvers. REACH provides an arena where children suffering through poverty and homelessness can gain a pathway toward these powerful skills and hopefully create an escape route to a brighter future filled with success.
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