About Us

Read to Me Project Founder Barbara Greenway tells the story of how Read to Me Project began with an epiphany early one morning in 2011.

“At the beginning of every school year, working as a public school speech and language specialist, I received calls from alarmed kindergarten teachers asking me to assess dozens of children who had started school without important basic knowledge. The children simply weren’t ready for kindergarten, and the teachers were asking, “what’s wrong with these children!?” Most of the children were not ‘disabled’ but lagged as much as two years behind in language and cognitive skills. Skills that had not been stimulated at home during the first years of life, when 85 percent of the brain develops.

“Having spent years working to correct and remediate what could have been easily prevented, I realized one morning that action in a new direction was needed. That’s when the simple idea of enabling upper elementary students to read to their infant, toddler and preschool age siblings took form.

“The Project has trained and inspired thousands of students to read to young family members. Book-by- book, day-by-day, we hear that young siblings are using new words learned and are waiting at the front door for their older brothers or sisters to come home from school with another new story to be read out loud to them. Students tell us that they love reading stories, spending time with their young siblings and are becoming better readers.

“The Read to Me Project is a shared family experience centered on the love of reading and learning. The door has been opened for greater opportunities and a lifetime of success – their lives are being changed forever.”

“We have a shelf at our house with books but they were dusty because no one used them but since I started Read to Me and I read to my baby sister, my mom says that my little sister will grab those books and baby talk to them so I know I am helping her to want to be a reader.”

– 4th Grader who reads to her 1.5 year old sister

Read to Me Project is changing lives. Every book shared, opens a door to new wonder and learning. Every book read, brings a world of knowledge into homes where life experiences may be limited by poverty, low literacy or circumstance. Fear of the unknown can be replaced with curiosity, information and confidence in one’s abilities. Inequity is displaced with opportunity, hope and agency for all who can read and write. Literacy is the great equalizer, bringing people together around ideas, laughter, possibilities, shared amazement and inspiration.

The Project was launched 2011 in 4 classrooms with 50 students reading to 60 little brothers and sisters. To-date more than 22,300 students and little ones ages 6 months to 5 years have been impacted.

The family is a baby’s first teacher. A child’s development during the first five years of its life is the foundation for learning through the rest of its life. The earliest literacy experiences prepare a child with the language, vocabulary, and cognitive learning capacity that can set the course for a lifetime of greater success, equity and opportunity.

Literacy begins at birth. 85% of brain development occurs before age five. By five, a child’s language and vocabulary skills have formed the foundation for literacy and school success.

• Salinas Valley hospitals report 5,000 annual births. Currently 7 out of 10 Monterey County children start school behind — most never catch up.
• The literacy lag has been exacerbated by Covid related learning interuptions.
• 49% of Monterey County families do not read to their children.
• 45% of Monterey County parents have less than a high school education and first-generation immigrants often have less than a 6th grade education.
• Fewer than 25% of Monterey County families are accessing preschool programs and licensed day-care.

Read to Me Project:

• Is prevention-based, providing a quality, cost-effective program that helps prepare thousands of young children to enter kindergarten with the readiness skills needed to succeed in school and beyond.
• Also works remedially with students and the impacts have been proven. Student participant scores improved 68% greater on standard assessments compared to students not participating in the program.
• Is building home libraries by giving away new and donated books to participating children.
• Works to break the generational cycle of low-literacy among underserved families in our communities. 
• Provides parents with information about early brain development and ideas to nourish language through simple, daily activities.