Reading to kids is a critical part of development in the first years of life, but there is a wide gap between how often kids in low-income families hear stories and how often those in other families get story time, according to a new literacy campaign.

A new National “Read to Kids” campaign wants to close that divide, and it needs your help. 

Everybody Wins USA, a national literacy and mentoring nonprofit, has proposed a national effort to encourage parents, teachers and community volunteers to read to kids 20 minutes a day from birth through high school in change.org’s Ideas for Change in America contest. Change.org will present the top 10 ideas to the Obama administration.

The reading campaign is at once simple and powerful. Supporters compare it to the national fitness campaign, which supports kids getting 60 minutes of exercise a day. In this case, if kids listen to 20 minutes of stories, magazine articles or other writing every day they are better off, they suggest.

According to the National Commission on Reading report, Becoming a Nation of Readers, “the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.” However, The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study found that only 36% of kindergarten students of a low socioeconomic status were being read to every day by their parents. In total, low-income children hear only half to one-third as many spoken words as children in more affluent households. – National Read to Kids Campaign contest description at change.org.

This morning, the campaign had a real shot of making the cut, ranking 15th among all of the proposed ideas. It needed 478 votes to crack the top 10. Cast your vote now in support of literacy!

Final round voting closes Friday.