Hello Friends,

A special thank you goes out to Stephanie Tandoc and family for their generous contribution that will reserve 50 books for our initial 50,000 book drive. As a reminder to all, donations are tax deductible.

On Saturday, our team mailed out 90 letters to CEOs of billion dollar corporations with the hope of having them believe that our cause is their cause. Illiteracy is a social disease and like the homeless is in general stigmatized. Illiteracy is believed to be faceless like poverty. What this means is that we know poverty and illiteracy exist, but don't believe it affects us or our way of living. Consider this, over half of our student population struggle in reading and are equally likely to fail in other subjects such as math and science. In less than 20 years there won't be many manufacturing facilities left in the United States because once the baby boom generation retires there aren't enough younger skilled laborers to replace them. I've seen this firsthand in that out of 82 temps. only three were eventually hired in a manufacturing plant I once worked at in 2005.

Struggling readers fall into a pool of nonskilled day laborers. If factories continue leaving the United States, then with them they'll take higher paid blue collar positions, which lesser educated workers once found employment in. The only careers left for nonskilled day laborers are retail positions, migrant positions and/or construction type positions, which have a tendency of paying minimum wage and are considered terminal positions without the chance for advancement.

Statistics prove that our jails have become overpopulated as a result of the recent rise in illiteracy, and our economy and tax dollars continue to erode from the aftermath of this social disease. America's future prosperity is before us now, and if we can't find a way to reverse illiteracy from within and teach immigrants coming into our country our language and culture, then we will become a second tiered nation. Monetary donations from industries' leaders and support from its skilled labor pool--not our government or our current teaching staff--hold the cure to our current crisis.