“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”

– Margaret Fuller

Vision 

Young children in York County enter school ready to learn.

Mission 

ELP mobilizes people, leverages resources, and empowers social, emotional and early literacy programs that help prepare children, birth to age 5, for school success.

Reading with a preschool child is the single most important activity to prepare a child for school.

The most critical predictor of eventual high school graduation and career success is a child’s reading proficiency by the third grade; however, 80% of children living below the poverty line do not develop this proficiency.

Low literacy is the socioeconomic factor prison inmates have most in common.

Studies show that children entering kindergarten may have as much of a vocabulary gap as eight years. That is because a child who has not been read aloud to may have limited vocabulary of a two-year-old, while a child who has been read aloud to every day may have the vocabulary of a 10-year-old.

The average middle-income child has 100 hours of being read aloud to as compared to 25 hours for low-income children.

Academic failure in late elementary school results in increased risk for substance abuse, delinquency, teen pregnancy, school dropout and violence.