Reading for a Better World

Read this post that I wrote on my new site, www.read-aloud.org. I’m still in the process of creating it.

The focus of Read-Aloud.org is to promote literacy (not the ability to read, but the desire and implementation of reading) in people worldwide, as well as providing books for people in impoverished nations who don’t have access to them.

Please let me know if you are interested in helping with this project, or if you have any ideas for promoting it.

The Future of the World

So I just began reading today The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. (I heard about his book from Esmé Codell’s How to Get Your Child to Love Reading, a very excellent resource for great children’s books on every topic imaginable, and all sorts of ideas to get kids to love reading.)

Anyway, I started reading Trelease’s book today, and was so inspired by it (even though I only read the introduction). I am a home schooler, and a huge advocate of literacy. I know that reading will change your life. And if more people read (and read the right stuff, because there is a difference), the world would be changed dramatically.

Not just small changes, but major, world altering changes. Poverty could be eliminated, wars could end, resources would be unlimited, all from reading.

Now this was the point he was making in his introduction, that studies show that those who read have a better life, are better community and world members, make more money, are better educated, have a larger vocabulary, etc., etc.

And the surefire way to ensure that children enjoy reading and have a desire to do it long past school age (college and above) is to read to them out loud everyday. Not for hours, only 15 minutes minimum. That’s it.

Then suddenly the idea hit me. The dream of my husband and I is to do humanitarian work worldwide. He has always been interested in emergency/disaster relief, while my interest has been more towards literacy and financial education.

My sister is currently staying in an orphanage in Honduras for a month. She helps out everyday with the children, and as I thought of her, I realized that more likely than not (based on my experience living in Costa Rica), there are probably few or no books at that orphanage, and I’m sure there are no adults reading to those children everyday.

So what I want to do is organize a humanitarian group that supplies books for orphanages, schools, even homes with children, and then ‘trains’ the adults who care for those children to read aloud to them everyday.

This is going to be something I’m going to think about and see how to get it done. I would appreciate any ideas, comments, suggestions for organizing it, collecting supplies, raising donations and distributing.