Making a Difference: Janie Ephland
Born To Read (BTR)
Mission: To promote early childhood literacy and oral language development, while helping new parents understand their critical role as their child’s first and most important teacher.
Tell us about Born to Read. Who benefits from this program?
Born to Read is the only program in which volunteers visit new parents and their infants while promoting literacy at the beginning of the child’s life. Each baby is given a resource bag that contains information in both English and Spanish about the many resources available to them in Beaufort County. Because of our partnership with Beaufort County School District and the Beaufort County Library system, our organization plays a valuable role in giving parents literacy information. There are no other programs in the four county areas of Beaufort, Jasper, Colleton, and Hampton which seek to personally contact all parents where the mothers deliver their babies in the local area hospitals. As an all-inclusive program, BTR anticipates serving around 2,000 new mothers in these communities in the coming year.
Born to Read also offers free parent workshops four times a year throughout Beaufort County designed for children 18-months to 3 years old. Materials given are in both English and Spanish.