EU Read

My Daddy reads to me

An uncommon piloting project

A joint-venture project of the hessenstiftung – familie hat zukunft and Stiftung Lesen

The project “Mein Papa liest vor!“ (My daddy reads to me) addresses working fathers of children aged from being a baby to twelve years, in the federal state of Hesse. The project aims to allow the fathers to make a stronger appearance as reading role models, taking up on their responsibility as reading fathers. The initiators thus react upon findings from contemporary studies on reading out aloud, where merely 8 percent of the interviewed children claimed their fathers read to them on a regular basis.

Enterprises in the state of Hesse receive a reading service free of charge, which is offered to their employees via the company’s intranet. The enterprises thus enable their employees to sustainably increase their engagement in the family and improve the educational opportunities of their employee’s children.

This reading service consists of a comprehensive read-out aloud dossier including background information and suggestions for reading out aloud, accessible for download, as well as new stories suited for reading out aloud that are updated each week and also accessible for download via the company’s intranet. The selection of stories provided for download takes the distinct interests of boys and girls into account, as well as providing material for different age groups and cultural backgrounds.

Fathers will thus be able to print out the dossier and the respective weekly story at their workplace and take it home to read to their children at night or at the weekend.  This way, reading to their children will be brought to the fathers’ minds, and they will be saved the trouble of seeking out appropriate reading material!

This project is run by Stiftung Lesen (Germany)