Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!    

– “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss

Since today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday it is a good time to report that Thrive by Five Washington will encourage more kids to travel off to great places by investing $350,000 on programs that help them learn to read.

The $350,000 investment will launch Thrive’s Culture of Literacy initiative, which will spend the public and private dollars largely in rural communities around Washington State.  It will spend a lot of the money on the Reach Out and Read Washington program, which encourages doctors and nurses to give new books to kids, and their parents, during checkups.

 The Culture of Literacy initiative has broader goals than spending this $350,000, and one is to create an early literacy system in Washington.

Thrive will step in with funds at a time when Reach Out and Read Washington could use some help.  For the last two years, the federal Reach Out and Read program has not been able to give its Washington affiliate new books. Now, the Washington program will be able to get new books to families in underserved and sometimes un-served rural and tribal communities.

Early literacy is key, setting the stage not only for later literacy, but development and school readiness. The one thing parents hear over and over again is ‘Read to your child.”

Thrive by Five’s early literacy efforts extend beyond this investment. For example, Thrive partnered with the Department of Early Learning to spend $1.5 million in Reading Readiness grants during 2007-08, funds that helped 12 groups around Washington encourage early literacy. But, the partnership was not able to invest in 2008-09 because of budget cuts.

While Thrive’s literacy campaign will take a big step forward with this new investment, imagine the places it might go with more state and federal funding.