By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
A new program called St. Joseph Reads has a goal of teaching the St. Joseph community the importance of being literate.
The goal of the program is using literacy to help improve both the community and individuals’ lives
Chairperson Carol Burns says one purpose of the initiative is to help people in the community know all the resources available to them.
“We have some incredible libraries that are tremendous resources to our community, and we want to encourage people to take advantage of them,” Burns tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “It’s already here, it can be something as simple as taking your child to the library, participating in story hour, or if you don’t have a library card getting a library card.”
Burns says the importance of literacy is something she feels that people have simply forgotten about, something she says the world has seen over the last decade
“Literacy rates have dropped, and children are struggling with literacy, it was a fact before COVID but then COVID greatly increased the difficulties that children had with literacy,” Burns explains. “And it’s something that I feel like we’ve been hearing about for quite a long time.”
Burns says she feels this is something the community can come together to find ways to work together and enhance literacy in St. Joseph to improve the community.
Burns says the group has worked on several programs that target almost every age group to share the importance of reading.
“We support the Dolly Parton (Imagination Library) and that’s zero to five, and then we’re getting kids ready for school with the kindergarten readiness so if we get that information out to parents,” Burns says. “And it’s kind of like a building block, we’re looking at all ages of children and how what can we offer them, how can we help them.”
Burns says the goal of the program is to help kids get through struggles with reading and show how fun it can be.
A kickoff event introducing the program to the community will be held this evening at the East Hills Library from 4 to 5:30pm. The group also has several other projects in the works to encourage people to read.
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