R.I.F. Reading Is Fundamental

"Give a kid a book and you'll give a kid a break!"
"You're pretty smart, how'd you get so smart?" 

"READING!"

Three lines I'll never forget from a very memorable PSA (public service announcement). This series of PSAs typically aired during my favorite WPIX NY Channel 11 after-school television programming during the '70s and '80s .

It's funny watching the ad now. I remember everything about this commercial - from Ed Asner grabbing the little girl's nose in jest to the fact that I didn't really know what they were advertising exactly. I mean, I was just a kid. Other than suggesting we kids focus on reading and ironically not our after-school television shows, I had no idea RIF was and is such a great organization.

RIF is a  nonprofit dedicated to inspiring and motivating kids to read. It began in 1966. The following is taken directly from the RIF.org website...

"In 1966, former teacher Margaret McNamara brought a bag of used books to four boys in Washington, D.C., whom she tutored in reading. When she told the children they could each pick out a book to keep, their astonishment and delight led her to discover that these children, and many of their classmates, had never owned any books.

 

By that summer, Mrs. McNamara had gathered a group of school volunteers, and on November 3, 1966, they launched the book distribution and reading motivation program they called Reading Is Fundamental. 

From November 1966 through the early 1970s, RIF expanded from a pilot project at three elementary schools in Washington, D.C., to a program reaching children in 60 of the city's public schools.

In 1975, the U.S. Congress created the "Inexpensive Book Distribution Program" (IBDP) which provides federal matching funds to sites that qualify for RIF's national book program.

Today, through its contract with the U.S. Department of Education to operate the IBDP, now supplemented with private funds, RIF programs operate in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. RIF is also affiliated with programs in Argentina and the United Kingdom. "