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National Reading Month: Appreciate & Support Literacy

• March is designated as National Reading Month
• Keenan partners with Reading is Fundamental (RIF) to help provide books and literacy resources to children
• Keenan associates record videos reading children’s books out loud to be distributed to local teachers

National Reading Month: A Time to Appreciate and Support Literacy

Each year, the month of March is designated as National Reading Month and it’s a celebration of the many gifts provided through the written word. Books offer us an entire universe of knowledge, adventure, insight and entertainment. Reading provides opportunities that perhaps no other skill can match for advancing a person’s growth, occupational and economic enhancement, and ability to participate constructively in society.

During National Reading Month, we encourage you to take advantage of everything that books, magazines, and online libraries have to offer you. Take a chance on exploring a new subject, expand your knowledge of a historical figure you admire, or share your love of reading with someone else. Whatever you choose to read, try to appreciate how valuable and gratifying this fundamental skill is to you. It’s a wonderful gift you can pass on to others, yet still keep it for a lifetime.

Not all children have the opportunity to own their own books, and that’s why Keenan partnered with Reading is Fundamental (RIF) and hosted a book drive to help get books into our youth’s hands. RIF’s mission is to ensure children have access to books during the critical years of learning and development. They believe that every child deserves an opportunity to own books, learn how to read, and obtain the fundamental building blocks to achieve their highest potential. RIF is the nation’s largest children’s literacy non-profit. To learn more about RIF, visit their website here. Keenan is proud to partner with RIF and all funds raised from the drive are going to help provide books and literacy resources to children in communities near our different offices.

In addition to the book drive, some of our individual associates are making their own contribution to children’s literacy by recording a video reading a children’s book out loud that RIF will distribute to local teachers. As you can imagine, teachers are having a tough time keeping their students engaged in remote learning (especially the younger ones), so being able to play a video of someone reading a story gives them a short break and helps the kids focus again. Our hope is that these recordings can inspire the desire to read and bring extra joy into today’s virtual classrooms.

In the U.S., there are still too many children who begin school without the basic skills to learn how to read. For a variety of unfortunate reasons, many adults never learned to read. It just takes one person who is willing to share their time and talent to change that. We hope you participate with us in National Reading Month and wish you happy reading!

About JoAnn Angeli
JoAnn Angeli is the Event and Community Relations Manager at Keenan. In this role, JoAnn helped design and currently drives and directs the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility program.