Did you know that 66% of Cleveland residents are functionally illiterate. Functionally illiterate is when a person can’t read past a fourth grade level. So when it comes to reading restaurant menus, schedules or even job applications it becomes a struggle for our community members. What’s  even a more startling statistic is that 50% of African-American youth in fourth grade can not read above a fourth grade level. Unfortunately, as we know when a child can't read past the fourth grade that is a precursor to being impoverished, increased drop out rates and being more susceptible to committing crimes which can ultimately lead to incarceration.

Even though these unfortunate statistics exist they don’t have to and this is why our our organization ABC READ, INC has decided to be the change we want to see. We would like to continue what we started in 2014 which is to have our Read To Succeed summer reading program at the Gateway 105 Farmer’s Market.

We understood not only by data but also by our experiences and observations that our young people were not interested in reading a book because of a number of reasons but, there were 3 reasons that continuously were given. When I would ask young people why they were not interested in reading they would answer with, reading is boring, there aren’t books that have characters or topics that we can relate to and we don’t have any books at home.

So, of course we listened to our young people by providing a space where they can come and enjoy interactive read aloud, have fun and engaging projects that reinforce the story being read to them, provide our young people and their families with healthy snacks and finally they get to take a brand new or gently used book with them so they could begin to build their own home libraries. Another very important component to having our summer reading program at the farmer’s market is so our families in particular our youth can learn about entrepreneurship, self-sufficiency, and community building in their own backyards.