JACKSON, Wyo. — Special guests joined Teton County parents and children for the Raising Readers in Wyoming kick off event held at the Teton County Library in Jackson, on May 4. Raising Readers is a program being implemented throughout the state to help parents prepare their young children for reading, while promoting well-child doctor visits. With the expansion of the program into Teton County, Raising Readers is now active in all 23 Wyoming Counties, reaching 4,900 children.

Guest speakers at the Teton County kick off event included Jackson City Council member Abe Tabatabai, speech/language pathologist Aaron Bilotta and retired psychologist and Rotarian Glen Meyers. Sheriff Bob Zimmer read to children in attendance. The Teton County Library provided refreshments for the event.

Raising Readers in Wyoming encourages parents to read to their young children by providing beautiful new books as part of their well-child health care visits. The goals of the program are to improve child health, increase the number of times a parent reads to their children per week, and support families as they prepare their children to enter kindergarten.

"Reading to infants and young children is very important to their brain development," said program director Jolene Olson. "A national survey found that only 39 percent of parents read to or looked at a picture book with their infant daily. One in six reported never having read to their infant. A baby’s brain needs the stimulation of being read to and spoken to in order to develop an understanding of language."

Raising Readers in Wyoming is made possible in Teton County through a $300,000, three-year grant from the PacifiCorp Foundation for Learning, the philanthropic arm of Pacific Power. The Foundation is working to improve early childhood literacy rates in communities served by Pacific Power and Utah Power.

Raising Readers in Wyoming is administered through Child Development Services of Wyoming. In addition to major funding from the PacifiCorp Foundation for Learning’s Pacific Power Fund, support for the program is provided by the Wyoming Early Childhood Development Council; McMurry Foundation; Parent Education Network; Wyoming Department of Education; Wyoming Department of Family Services; Wyoming Pediatrics Association; Visiting Nurses Association; AmeriCorps/VISTA; Wyoming Community Foundation; and others. Local volunteers have also been instrumental to the implementation of Raising Readers throughout Wyoming.

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