Words Alive helps underserved youth and families in San Diego County use reading as a tool to change their lives. From May 30-June 2, Words Alive is running a campaign called Share Your Love of Reading, an annual campaign to promote the importance of reading in everyone's life. The campaign aims to celebrate reading in a variety of ways:

• Book Give Away: Words Alive will be giving away over 4,000 books to children; volunteers will hand out a brand-new book to each child to help build home libraries!
• #Shelfie: Promote your love of reading via the Words Alive social media campaign by taking a picture with your favorite book or your bookshelf with the hashtags #shareyourloveofreading and #shelfie.
• Raising Support: Words Alive wants to grow the number of people who donate their time and resources to so that we can impact the lives of even more children.The organization has a variety of days and times available and can identify a classroom for you. Join the growing group of elected officials, professional athletes, and media personalities helping champion the importance of reading in our community.

Why champion literacy?

• Because in low-income communities, an average of just one book is available at home for every 300 children.
• Because preschoolers in low-income homes hear 30 million fewer words by kindergarten than their middle-class peers.
• Because most at-risk teens we work with have never read a book cover to cover by age 16.

Words Alive Read Aloud Programs have gifted over 9,500 new books to children over the course of the year so that children can build their own home libraries. Learn more about Words Alive and how you can Share Your Love of Reading at http://www.wordsalive.org/share-your-love-of-reading/ or call Susan Arias, Development Director, at (858) 274-9673 with any questions and to set up your reading time.