Thank Your Mother for Literacy with New Campaign from FCB Inferno

This Mother’s Day we’ll spend a whopping $2.5 billion buying cards for our mums. Some of us will write heart felt messages of gratitude, some humorous words of thanks, and others will write them right at last minute, because they’ve forgotten all about it.

Whatever your words to mum, being able to write them means you have another reason to say thanks.

That’s because the single greatest indicator of a child’s future success is the literacy level of their parents. So if mum can’t read or write, it not only affects her, it affects her kids too - because illiterate parents are much more likely to pass the problem down.

There are 32 million adults in the USA who cannot read or write. These are vital skills. Without them, mums can’t access education, they’re more likely to be in low paid work – or have no job at all – to live in poverty, be homeless or suffer from a drug addiction.

But here’s the good news: this cycle can be broken. If you’re looking for a way to make a big impact, teaching mums to read and write is a great place to start.

Mums like Wanda, who constantly worried whether she would help or harm her sick kids because she couldn’t read the instructions on a medicine bottle. She tried everything to hide her lack of literacy – even making up stories when her kids asked her to read them a book. When they started school she was forced to admit that she didn’t know how to read and the shame she felt brought her back to her own school days, when the other kids would make fun of her. Wanda decided she didn’t want to live in fear anymore. She’s been working steadily with her tutor at Adults Can Learn to Read, a partner of the Philadelphia Office of Adult Education, for four months now. With their help, she’s now on her way to being able to ready any book her kids want her to.

This Mother’s Day, to raise awareness of this important issue, FCB Inferno has created a film for Project Literacy to be released on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. As well as writing to their moms this Sunday, FCB Inferno would like people to help a mom who can’t read and write, by spreading the word, or getting involved at Projectliteracy.com/thankyoumom.