Raising Readers Turns 10: Cows, Babies & Books
With books, we can build baby brains. With cows, we can create a college education.
Come again?
It's true: just ask Owen Wells. At the age of ten, Owen was given a calf to raise on his uncle's farm in southern Maine. Once this calf was grown, he sold it for $200, and raised another. Then another. By the time he finished high school, he had earned $600--enough for his first year of classes at the University of Maine in Orono.
Life gave Owen a cow--three, to be exact. Owen traded his cows for a college education. That's what we Mainers would call 'Yankee ingenuity,' also known as 'creative resource allocation.'
Owen Wells has continued to engage in creative resource allocation (coupled with a fair amount of good old-fashioned elbow grease) for the past several decades. After finishing his undergraduate education, and obtaining a law degree from George Washington University Law School, Mr. Wells served in Vietnam with Army Intelligence for a year. He applied his legal knowledge as a partner at Perkins Thompson in Portland, where he met the late Elizabeth "Betty" Noyce.
Libra Foundation president, Owen Wells, originated the idea for Raising Readers a decade ago.
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Ms. Noyce was a champion of creative resource allocation--and of the Pine Tree State. She had a particular interest in education. During her lifetime, Ms. Noyce supported Maine institutions such as Colby, Bates and Bowdoin Colleges, the Maine Maritime Museum, and the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. In 1989, Ms. Noyce created the Libra Foundation.
According to its mission statement, the Libra Foundation "maintains a balance and diversity of giving throughout Maine and across all populations." With the help of President and CEO Owen Wells, the Libra Foundation has sent kids to camp, skiers to snow, and businesses to "re-purposed" old buildings, through such diverse programs as
- the Libra Summer Camp Program in Portland, Lewiston and Bangor,
- the Maine Winter Sports Center in northern Maine, and
- Pineland Center in New Gloucester.
The Libra Foundation has also sent books to hundreds of thousands of Maine babies through the Raising Readers program.
Raising Readers is a prime example of creative resource allocation. More than a decade ago, as a member of the Board of the Hauser Center of Harvard University, Owen attended a very important meeting. This meeting, called the Harvard Children's Initiative, included a discussion on baby brain power. According to research described there by the Dean of Harvard Medical School, 90% of an infant's cortex is fully developed at birth. In other words, babies are ready to start learning immediately
Putting the Brains of Baby Mainers to Work
Never one to waste a resource, Mr. Wells decided to put the brains of baby Mainers to work. He did so by creating the Raising Readers program. This program, administered jointly by MaineHealth and Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, supplies children's books to health care providers across the state. These books are distributed at every well child visit from birth to age 5. Now in its 10th year, Raising Readers has provided more than 1.3 million books to 166,000 Maine children.
"For many Maine families, Raising Readers books are the only books in the home," said Deborah Deatrick, MPH, Vice President of Community Health at MaineHealth. "Studies show that reading aloud to a child from birth helps the child learn the early literacy skills he needs to be 'ready to learn' when entering kindergarten," continued Ms. Deatrick, adding, "Raising Readers helps ensure that all Maine children are exposed to high-quality, developmentally appropriate books from the time they are born."
Literacy has become recognized as an important health care concern. According to a recent press release by Raising Readers, "The latest national survey of literacy in the U.S. showed that nearly 90 million adults lack the ability to use the healthcare system effectively, resulting in billions of dollars of unnecessary costs."(1)
Raising Readers has been highly successful in its quest to bring literacy to Maine children.
- Almost two-thirds of healthcare providers report that Raising Readers has increased how frequently they counsel parents about reading; 75 percent report an increase in parents reading aloud because of Raising Readers books.(2)
- Maine has the second highest rate among the 50 states of parents reporting that they read aloud to their child daily. (3)
- It is the largest program of its kind anywhere, with 329 health centers, 29 hospitals and six birthing centers across all 16 Maine counties. It serves more than 70,000 children every year.
The goal of Raising Readers is simple, according to Owen Wells: "We want all kids in Maine to be able to read." The Libra Foundation has been working toward that goal by putting the brains of baby Mainers to work for the past decade.
From cows for college to books for babies: success is always possible, with a bit of Yankee ingenuity.
Just ask Owen Wells.
References
(1) http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/blueprint/scope.shtml
(2) 2009 Raising Readers Quality Improvement Survey.
(3) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau. The National Survey of Children's Health, 2007. Rockville, MD: U.S.Department of Health and Human Services.
