Community leaders unite at St. Joseph Reads to address literacy crisis
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (KQTV)-- St. Joseph Reads recently brought the community together for its literacy summit, gathering educators, business leaders and nonprofit partners to tackle a big issue: literacy.
Kara Anderson, director of special programs for the St. Joseph School District, said literacy is at the heart of their work—and educators are eager to be part of the solution.
“With the help of the entire community so, we can see what else we can do improve the literacy within our community,” Anderson said.
Her biggest takeaway was that improving literacy isn’t the responsibility of just one program or organization—it takes everyone working together and combining resources to truly help students grow and reach their goal
She also stressed how literacy impacts far more than just students and teachers—it affects the entire community.
“It affects whether a student chooses to go college and or the workforce and when talking today we realized about 13,000 of our community members actually struggle with literacy and it affects a lot of things,” Anderson added.
That’s why, she said, it’s so important for everyone to be involved and work together to improve those numbers and strengthen the community as a whole.
Susan Campbell, owner and president of SJC Marketing, has long been an advocate for literacy. She said her passion is personal.
“My company started out as a content company, and I wanted to be a writer when I was growing up and so I have written content for companies all over the world and in order to do that you have to read, right?” Campbell said.
She said the summit gave attendees a lot to think about, especially when it comes to how the business community can step up
“So one of the things that we are looking at is how do we support great programs that are already in place and how do we show our support that literacy matters?” Campbell said.
Campbell also emphasized the importance of starting early and supporting families, especially parents.
For her, literacy isn’t just an education issue—it’s directly tied to the future of the workforce and the overall health of the community.
“And if we don’t care about that then our community is not going to thrive so we have to have a voice at the table, we need to show up and we need to be informed,” Campbell said.
She hopes everyone walks away understanding how powerful motivation can be—how it can push people to actually do something, whether that’s telling someone about it, buying or giving away a book, or taking some kind of action instead of just leaving and going back to life as usual.
