Russell Westbrook Opens Three 'Reading Rooms' For Youths from Low-Income Families

NBA star Russell Westbrook has opened up three "Russell Reading Rooms" in order to encourage the youth to enhance their literary skills. The Oklahoma City basketball player has launched the reading rooms for low-income youths, which comes right on time for the upcoming school year this Fall.

As it just so happens, one of the reading rooms that opened was launched at Westbrook's former elementary school. Partnering with Scholastic, as well as his very own Russell Westbrook Why Not? Foundation, the companies were able to install the three reading rooms at 75th Street Elementary, Manhattan Place Elementary and Frank D. Parent Elementary in southern Los Angeles. They were opened on Aug. 21 of this year, with two of them containing over 1,200 books for youth of all ages.

Westbrook acknowledged the education encouragement, stating, “I believe education is the simplest and most direct path towards a better life, so I want to not only motivate these kids to read and get involved in their education, but also to provide them with the tools necessary to successfully meet my challenge.”

Not only do the reading rooms contain books for kindergarteners through 5th grade, but they also have stereo CD listening stations, and listening library with fluency CD’s.

The reading rooms are also coordinated into Westbrook’s program, Russell’s Reading Challenge, which is part of Scholastic’s national "Read 100,000 Challenge" program. Scholastic hopes that the program will “encourage students to read and log 100,000 minutes as part of a school team.”

Subway has also jumped on board, and is providing coupons for a free six-inch sub to middle school students who achieve reading 25,000 minutes total after reading for just 20 minutes a day. Hopefully this will drive younger students to pick up a book and get to reading when the school year starts.