Reading Start---Early children’s reading program(for children aged 0-6 in Shenzhen, China. )

In order to make it convenient for citizens to get nearby,60 collection points are open in reading backpacks collection points in the city, and the open collection points cover community service centers, women's and children's homes, libraries, kindergartens, book stores and shopping centers.

The reading backpacks officially began to be distributed in May 2016, and 75,523 reading buds have been distributed as of December 31, 2018, benefiting the whole population of children and families aged 0-6 in shenzhen. Nearly 120,000 families have access to early reading resources through the Reading Start APP

They are taught by excellent experts in the field of early children’s reading, the training course combines the learning of theories and practical reading activities in the communities.

The length of the training course is one and a half years. Students attend the training once every month. Each training session is one weekend long.

After graduation, reading promoters will be scattered to all communities to carry out reading promotion activities ,which provide more families and communities with systematic and effective reading guidance.

By the end of 2018, 90 qualified students have been trained. After graduation, the students will be sent to communities as "seed" reading instructors to carry out various reading promotion activities

By the 2018, reading promoters have completed a total of 515 reading promotion activities in communities. the participants included 7518 children aged 0- 6 years old and 7909 parents who benefited from them.

Led by Dr. Chen Si and Professor Snow, the research team from Harvard University assessed the effectiveness of Reading Start. After analyzing the data collected, the research has found that Reading Start program has a significant and positive impact on parent-child reading in families with 0-3 year olds.

Compared with children who have not participated in Reading Start, participated children’s vocabulary’s development has improved significantly. Through Reading Start, parents also better understand high quality parent-child education. They generally agree that children should have access to more picture books, interaction with children is important and they should read more themselves.

Dr. Chen Si said: “After participating in Reading Start for half a year, parents significantly changed their attitudes toward children’s reading. Behind these positive changes is Shenzhen parents’ passion for parent-child reading. We are very very pleased to see parents’ change, because this is the key to changing family reading environment.” When the backpacks for 3-6 years are being distributed, there will be more research tracking children’s development. In the future, we will continue to answer questions about the mechanism affecting children’s reading. ”