CHARLOTTE — Over 6,000 babies in Mecklenburg County are born into financial hardship, but one local nonprofit is working on a new program to support their development.
“The more oral language that babies can hear, the faster they’ll develop their own language and eventually learn to read, and books provide that,” Kelly Cates, the executive director of Promising Pages, said.
The nonprofit hopes to launch a new program, called Book Start, late this year. It’s inspired by a program in the U.K. for all new families.
In Mecklenburg County, qualifying families with a baby will get five new books to read them, information on reading at a young age and various other reading resources.
“Being a new parent is stressful enough as it is,” Cates said. “We want to just make it really easy and so that it just becomes a habit of reading every single day, and all the books will hopefully be in native languages if we can acquire them.”
Promising Pages is WSOC’s partner in the 9 Books For Kids Drive. Donating new and gently used books will directly serve local children in need. The nonprofit says monetary donations are also welcome, and they can stretch the dollars to buy even more books. Learn more about how you can help here.