The Geneva Reads Initiative is a partnership between schools and libraries, government and community agencies, and others in Geneva, to raise the level of literacy in people of all ages and to increase the importance of reading and the reader in the community.

Reading remains an essential skill in 21st-century America, even when television and video are so wide spread and watching and listening seem such dominant and important skills. Reading and reading well continue to open doors of opportunity and contribute to our success. Whether reading a label on a box of rice, Moby Dick, or the symptoms of an illness on a medical website, the ability to read continues to have the formative influence on our lives and the lives of our children.

A person who is unable to read is often dependent on others for information. A person who is unable to read is often left behind, left outside millenniums of print, Harlequins to Psalms. Whole literatures, times, people, and places, largely lay beyond their reach. Worlds and words are closed to the person unable to read.

Geneva Reads supports the collaboration of those who care about our children, who work to nurture reading and the reader in our community, and who teach reading daily. Geneva Reads includes local schools and colleges, libraries and library systems, our day care and family centers, local government, our book stores and any others who work to support reading and the reader in the Geneva community.