The Children’s Reading Foundation of the Mid-Columbia: Reading Starts at Birth
The Children’s Reading Foundation of the Mid-Columbia (CRFMC) is a Washington State youth literacy nonprofit with a clear and urgent mission: ensuring that every child in the Tri-Cities region reads early and well by third grade. Through programs that begin at birth and continue through the elementary years, the foundation equips families with books, practical tools, and research-based guidance to help children build strong literacy skills before they ever enter a classroom.
At the heart of CRFMC’s work is a simple but powerful conviction: parents and caregivers are a child’s first and most influential teachers. The foundation distributes more than 30,000 books each year while working to ensure that families, regardless of income or background, have the resources they need to give their children the strongest possible start.
Kars4Kids was pleased to support this mission with a small grant. Helping place books into children’s hands is one of the most meaningful investments we can make, because strong readers become stronger students, and stronger students are better prepared for the opportunities that follow.
We spoke with Erin Lee, educational program director of the Children’s Reading Foundation of the Mid-Columbia, about why the earliest years matter so much, the science behind reading aloud, and how empowering parents can transform children’s futures.
Kars4Kids: For readers who aren’t familiar with your work, can you tell us about the children and families the Children’s Reading Foundation of the Mid-Columbia serves, and what the literacy landscape looks like in the communities you work in?
Erin Lee: The Tri-Cities region (Benton and Franklin counties) is home to roughly 328,000 people, with many families navigating English as a second language, a context that puts sustained pressure on early literacy outcomes and makes infant–3rd grade reading support like CRFMC’s programs especially critical. The heart of our work is helping families build strong foundations through literacy, which is essential for future homeownership, financial stability, and thriving neighborhoods. By providing books, tools, and our programs, we empower parents to be their child’s first teacher and support children in developing critical skills, like reading, that fosters lifelong success.
Kars4Kids: The foundation’s core message — Read Together 20 Minutes Every Day — is deceptively simple. What does the research actually show about what those 20 minutes can do for a child’s development and school readiness?
Erin Lee: Neuroscience research indicates that 85–90% of brain growth occurs in the first five years of life, making early language exposure especially consequential for cognitive development. The specific numbers you’ll see everywhere (1.8 million words/year at 20 min/day vs. 282,000 words/year at 5 min/day) come from a 1988 study by Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding, “Growth in Reading and How Children Spend Their Time Outside of School” (Reading Research Quarterly). Separately, vocabulary acquisition research (Nagy & Anderson, 1984; Nagy, Anderson & Herman, 1987) established that most vocabulary growth in school-age children comes from incidental exposure to words in context by reading.
Kars4Kids: CRFMC’s approach places parents and caregivers at the center, treating them as a child’s first and most influential teachers. Why is that framing so important, and how does it shape the way you design your programs?
Erin Lee: The first five years of life are the most critical period for brain development and also the time when children spend the most time with their parents and caregivers. That makes educating, empowering, and supporting parents and caregivers during this window not just beneficial, but essential. We advocate for our parents and encourage them through our programming to have this shared belief that they are their child’s most influential teacher. We walk alongside parents and provide the skills, tools and materials to ignite a child’s literacy success.
Kars4Kids: Do children really need their parents to read to them as babies?
Erin Lee: Absolutely. From birth to age 5, a child learns at a speed unmatched the rest of his or her life. Those early learning experiences influence success in school and beyond. Parents are a child’s first and most influential teachers. Reading to babies is crucial for language development. Research indicates that children whose parents read to them five books a day hear about 1.4 million more words by the time they enter kindergarten compared to those who are not read to at all. Reading to your baby is essential.
Kars4Kids: READY! for Kindergarten prepares children from birth through age 5 for school by equipping the adults around them with tools and activities. How does a typical workshop work, and what does “playing with a purpose” look like in practice?
Erin Lee: We offer three eLearning workshops per year for each age level from 0–5, paired with three kits of materials, tools, and books tied to our 26 developmental targets. Parents learn to use these tools in just 10 minutes a day to help their child reach key milestones and what we call “play with purpose”. To have fun, connected play that builds skills while creating the bond between parent and child.
Kars4Kids: Team Read pairs trained community volunteers with struggling readers for one-on-one sessions twice a week during the school day. How do you recruit and prepare those volunteers, and what makes the relationship between a tutor and a child so effective?
Erin Lee: We recruit committed, skilled volunteers through resource fairs, social media, ads, and school communication apps. We extensively train and support them closely with Site Coordinators and our Team Read managers.
At its essence, Team Read is all about relationships: with school districts as a trusted nonprofit partner, with administrators who open their doors, with teachers who refer students, with volunteers we invest in, and with the students themselves. Struggling to read is deeply vulnerable for a child and it is trust, built through those amazing relationships, that drives their real literacy growth. Students feel seen, heard and valued, and feel open to share in their obstacles and receptive to learning new skills to help overcome those obstacles.
Kars4Kids: Team Read has been running since 2000 and now operates in 13 schools across the Kennewick and North Franklin School Districts. What does that kind of sustained, school-embedded presence make possible that a shorter-term or drop-in program couldn’t?
Erin Lee: Experience, community investment, ability over time to make the program better year over year.
Kars4Kids: Research shows that children can lose up to three months of reading skills over a single summer. How does your Read Up — Stop the Summer Slide program address that, and how do you keep kids engaged with reading when school is out?
Erin Lee: The READ-Up program encourages children to continue to read throughout the summer months in an effort to avoid summer time reading loss. We span the community at events, schools, playdates, and groups providing books and literacy education to keep kids engaged. When kids have books to read and an exuberant, charismatic person delivering a message of encouragement, they want to read, they get excited to read.
Kars4Kids: Books for Babies gets books and early reading information into the hands of parents the moment a child is born, right at the hospital. What do you want a brand-new parent to understand about reading and language development in those very first weeks and months?
Erin Lee: From birth to age 5, a child learns at a speed unmatched the rest of his or her life. Those early learning experiences influences their success in life. Reading to a baby is essential to give them the tools to soar.
Kars4Kids: The foundation distributes over 30,000 books annually through its various programs. How do you think about book access as a piece of the literacy puzzle — and what difference does it make for a child to have books of their own at home?
Erin Lee: Here are the facts:
- Children with 100+ books at home have roughly a 90% chance of completing ninth grade, compared to just 30% for children with no books at home
- Early learning experiences influence success in school and beyond
- Parents and caregivers are a child’s first and most influential teachers
- Every dollar invested in early childhood education produces a 10% per annum return on investment. (James Heckman, PhD, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2000)
It is imperative to encourage, provide access and give children the best shot at being the best they can be. We like to think and are committed to advocating for every child and every family to have the resources they need to achieve this goal.
Kars4Kids: What’s next for the Children’s Reading Foundation of the Mid-Columbia?
Erin Lee: We will continue to be steadfastly committed to our mission and vision that all children read early and well by third grade.