What is The Russell Life Skills and Reading Foundation?

Twan Russell, a professional athlete playing in the NFL, founded the Russell Life Skills and Reading Foundation, Inc. in 1998. The Foundation was incorporated in 1999.

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Why is The Russell Life Skills and Reading Foundation's work important?

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40 percent of third graders read below grade level (and levels are even higher in many of our inner cities)
(Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress)

40 million adults in the U.S. read and write at or below the 5th grade level (that is 1 in 4 adults)
(Source: National Center on Adult Literacy)

Illiteracy costs the U.S. $225 billion/year in lost productivity
(Source: Literacy Partners, Inc. (NYC))

People working in correctional systems have long been aware of the relationship between poor literacy skills and crime .... Various Canadian and American sources suggest that between one-quarter and two-thirds of all prisoners are functionally illiterate.
(Source: Ontario Literacy Coalition, Fact Sheet #4)

Although a typical middle class child arrives at school with about 1,000 hours of being read to, his or her low-income neighbor averages just 25 hours.
(Source: Los Angeles Times, 1998)

61 percent of low income families have no books at all in their homes for their children. While low-income children have, on average, roughly four children's books in their homes, a team of researchers recently concluded that nearly two-thirds of the low-income families ....owned no books for their children.
(Source: Reading Literacy in the United States, 1996)

The most successful way to improve the reading achievement of low-income children is to increase their access to print. Communities ranking high in achievement tests have several factors in common: an abundance of books in public libraries, easy access to books in the community at large and a large number of textbooks per student.
(Source: Newman, Stanford, et al. "American's Child Care Crisis: A Crime Prevention Tragedy", Fight Crime, Invest in Kids, 2000)

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