Northside organization Reading is Fundamental Pittsburgh encourages childhood literacy
In classrooms across the country, children are constantly looking down. Not at their notebooks, but at glowing screens that pull their attention in every direction except the lesson in front of them. A growing overreliance on technology and the recent surge of AI has amplified learning challenges and social-emotional issues for many young people, leaving parents, teachers, and community leaders struggling to find answers.
Perhaps the strongest antidote to our digital world is the easiest: teaching young people to simply put down their devices and pick up a book.
Reading is one of the most basic skills needed to thrive in our world today, as literacy affects everything from academic performance to economic security and mental health. But reading scores in the U.S. are the lowest they’ve been in decades. For example, in Pittsburgh Public Schools, more than half of third graders were not proficient in reading last school year.
Building a life of literacy is no easy feat. It takes all of us — families, educators, and communities — working together in support of the kids in our care.
For the past nearly 20 years, I’ve had the privilege to serve as the Executive Director for Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) Pittsburgh, a children’s literacy nonprofit that provides more than 84,000 books to thousands of children and families in underserved communities across Pittsburgh each year, helping to mitigate barriers in children’s literacy development. Our programs are designed to increase children’s access to books, self-selection of books, motivational reading environments, and family and community engagement.
Our work also centers the importance of reading for enjoyment by following the “pleasure, practice, proficiency” model: the more children learn to enjoy reading, the more they will read, and the more they read, the more proficient they will become. In other words, the children who learn to love reading learn how to read.
By encouraging children to read — not just for learning, but for pleasure — we can show them how to connect with each other and the world around them while preparing them for success. Engaging with stories about people who are different from them also helps instill empathy in young readers and creates inclusive reading habits. This can help reduce the feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and depression that many young people are experiencing in our tech-obsessed world.
This is why we’re proud to be part of the “Won’t You Be a Reader?” campaign. Together with the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the Grable Foundation, and over a dozen regional organizations, we’re working to spark a lifelong love of reading among young people in the Pittsburgh area.
We invite you to be a children’s literacy champion along with us. How? Try sharing your enthusiasm for reading with a friend or relative, take a child you know to a bookstore or library, or give a child a book that you loved at their age. By encouraging kids to read more and scroll less, we can help create a new generation of engaged and empowered readers!
For more information, visit rifpittsburgh.org.
— Florri Ladov
Reading is Fundamental
Allegheny City Central
