The United Way of West Central Mississippi’s literacy program, Leaders Encouraging Advancement in Reading Now, or LEARN, received a big boost Tuesday with the turnout for the Curious George Birthday Bash at the Vicksburg Mall.

The Bash, which was the United Way’s effort to participate in the organization’s national Day of Action, used the 75th birthday of one of the iconic characters of children’s literature to highlight childhood literacy and encourage reading by children from kindergarten to third-grade. It was a good preliminary event for LEARN, which begins this school year.

“This event encourages young children to fall in love with reading,” Michele Connelly, executive director of the United Way of West Central Mississippi, said Tuesday.

The free event, which was held in partnership with Excel by 5 and other local companies, was geared toward preschool and early elementary school-aged children, and featured several activities: an interactive fitness routine, a hands-on cooking station and guest appearances by Curious George himself.

Connelly said more than 10 business and organizations registered booths for the event including Lorelei Books, the Vicksburg Police and Fire departments and various health-related businesses.

“We chose literacy as our local focus for the (Day of Action) event because we believe it touches on all three of the pillars of our organization: education, financial stability and health,” she said. “We by all means wanted to join in on the festivities.”

Participation by local businesses, the city police and fire departments and others is the goal of LEARN, which seeks to have community leaders go into local schools to discuss the importance of reading in children’s lives and developing literacy skills at an early age, and become involved with the students to get them enthused about becoming better readers.

Educators for years have stressed the importance of reading as a key to being successful in any endeavor. And with our society and the world becoming more technically oriented, reading becomes that much more important was we move in the future.

Illiteracy is a serious problem in America, and statistics offered by the organization Literacy Inc. point that out: According to a study conducted in late April 2015 by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the United States can’t read above a fifth grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can’t read.

According to the Department of Justice, “The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence and crime is welding to reading failure.”

The DOJ’s statistics show 85 percent of all juveniles involved with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, and over 70 percent of inmates in America’s prisons cannot read beyond a fourth grade level.

And 90 percent of all people who are on welfare are high school dropouts.

The United Way’s program seeks to break that trend, and they need to be congratulated for seeing the problem and wanting to fix it.

And the community should get on board.