REGIONAL FCU, Hammond, Investing in City’s Future Through Hammond Reads

REGIONAL FCU, Hammond, Investing in City’s Future Through Hammond Reads

The greatest resources a city has is in its people and its youth. They are the future doctors, lawyers, and difference makers in a community, and an investment in their future is an investment in the city’s future as well.

Which is why the Hammond Reads program, an organization started in order to increase literacy in Hammond and connect residents with the programs and resources they need to begin their love of reading, is driving the future of Hammond.

The Hammond Reads program was started as a joint venture between the School City of Hammond, City Government, Hammond Adult Education, and the Hammond Public Library, with support from community organizations and businesses that care.

Businesses like Hammond’s own REGIONAL Federal Credit Union (FCU).

“REGIONAL was originally founded by a group of teachers and dedicated to one of the most important aspects of education: literacy,” Clint Turpen, Marketing Specialist at REGIONAL FCU, told IIMM. “It was only natural for REGIONAL to support Hammond Reads.”

Turpen even served as a board member for Hammond Reads for some time, using the impact that books and reading had on his own life and passing that passion on to the youth involved in the Hammond Reads program.

“I learned to read early in life,” Turpen added. “I found that books allowed me to travel through time and space and see the world through other eyes and belief systems.”

“I fell in love with the sheer music of language and the vast possibilities of the written word.”

It’s this love of literacy, Turpen adds, and the mission of the program to connect those who want to fall in love with reading with the books and resources they need to do so, that makes the Hammond Reads program so valuable to the community.

Hammond Reads’ Vice President and Director of Economic Development for the City of Hammond, Africa Tarver, could not agree more with Turpen’s views on the importance of the program to the City.

“Show me a person who reads, and I will show you a person who dreams and wants to make the world a better place,” explained Tarver.

To both Turpen and Tarver, REGIONAL and the City of Hammond, the Hammond Reads program is about building a better Region, one book at a time.

Because a city, region, and world that reads, explains Turpen, is a better world for all.

“I believe that reading leads to kindness, gentleness, and empathy, and the world needs more of all three.”