• A third of the children in Georgia come to school unprepared to learn.
  
• 75% of students who are poor readers in the third grade will remain poor readers in high school.
  
• Georgia scored 50th on SATs in 2003.
  
• One in four adults in Georgia operates at a low literacy level.
  
• Low literate workers cost Georgia Businesses $7 billion a year.
  
• People in the U.S. who are illiterate represent: 75% of the unemployed, 33% of mothers receiving aid, 85% of juveniles who appear in court, 60% of prison inmates

If you have a child aged newborn through 5 years, and you would like for your child to receive one free age appropriate book a month from the Imagination Library and your local team, please go here to see if you have a contact in your area, go to this site, Blingo.com and enter your county name and Imagination Library. If your county has this program you can get the contact information to sign your child up. Numerous locations have a sign up option on the web page. IF YOU LIVE IN GEORGIA, GO HERE and you'll be able to sign up online if your county participates. To learn more about The Imagination Library, visit their website here. If you are in Georgia and know of someone that would like to start a chapter in your county, then please contact me and I'll give you the contact information. I just interviewed the head of this program, my kids have been enrolled since August, 2004 and they absoulutely love it!! Hope this is useful to some of you!!

"Ferst Foundation is striving to include all of the Georgia preschool-age children in our exciting program. Literacy is at the heart of economic development. It is the single factor that unpins most social issues. People who struggle daily for survival and have done so for generations don't know that education is the way out. They don't know that it begins with reading to their children. We want to raise expectations with the hope that in 18 years, we will have raised a generation of readers.
--Robin Ferst Howser

posted by MOM IS NUTZ  # 1:08 AM