1. Kent Wilding

2. Mission and Vision - Rock for Reading uses the power of music to inspire literacy, as well as to motivate and empower people to enrich their lives through reading. - To inspire a community of readers and create a community of dreamers.

3. Program and Goal - Creating a nation of readers – This program seeks to eliminate rising youth illiteracy rates in the United States by recruiting publishers to donate and distribute books to literacy organizations.

4. Community Need - To participate fully in society and the workplace in 2020, citizens will need powerful literacy abilities that until now have been achieved by only a small percentage of the population. - It is estimated that the cost of illiteracy to business and the taxpayer is $20 billion per year. - Approximately 50 percent of the nation's unemployed youth age 16-21 are functionally illiterate, with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs. Readfaster.com

5. Community Need - Out-of-school reading habits of students has shown that even 15 minutes a day of independent reading can expose students to more than a million words of text in a year. - When the State of Arizona projects how many prison beds it will need, it factors in the number of kids who read well in fourth grade. Readfaster.com

6. Inputs To improve the reading skills of children books must first be obtained: - Sponsors need to be found to provide funding for programs . - Volunteers are needed to process and distribute books to schools. - Publishers involvement and contribution in book donations and distribution.

7. Process - To distribute books to schools and libraries. - To teach children the value of reading critically. -Books need to be equally available to all children. -Reading will be greatly encouraged in schools and outside of schools.

8. Process -Children will be taught that reading advanced books with new ideas is just as important as recreational reading. -To read better and more effectively at the end of each year than at the beginning.

9. Outputs -Reading is an active mental process: Unlike sitting in front of the television, reading makes you use your brain. While reading you are forced to reason out many things which are unfamiliar to you. In this process you use the grey cells of your brain to think and become smarter. -By actively reading, you improve your vocabulary: Reading often helps you to make inferences based on the context clues of the sentence to understand a new word.

10. Outputs -Reading regularly helps to improve focus, allowing you to more fully devote yourself to a task. -Children with good recognition skills are exposed to almost twice as many words as children without good recognition skills.

11. Outcomes -Combining all of these factors will greatly improve a reader’s intellect and overall cognitiveand meta cognitive ability over an extended period of time. Long term benefits of reading are, but not limited to: - Students who reported having all four types of reading materials (books, magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias) in their home scored, on average, higher than those who reporter having fewer reading materials

12. Outcomes - Out-of-school reading habits of students has shown that even 15 minutes a day of independent reading can expose students to more than a million words of text in a year. - As the education level of adults improves, so does their children’s success in school. -Children who read often are more likely to score higher on tests and can better understand new ideas in class and outside of it.

13. Connections to The Foundation for Critical Thinking Rock for Reading: The Foundation for Critical Thinking: -Educating the public to promote activism and direct involvement. - To promote essential change in education and society through the cultivation of fair-minded critical thinking. -To raise funds in support of organizations championing the cause of literacy. - The cultivation of core intellectual virtues such as intellectual humility, perseverance, integrity, and responsibility. -To motivate and empower people to enrich their lives through reading.

14. Contact Information If you would like to learn more about the Rock for Reading organization, or would to like help, please visit their website: www.RockforReading.com

15. Thank You For you time and consideration.