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The invisible primary is well underway. From Jeb Bush to Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul to Marco Rubio, candidates are already angling for votes in the prized Iowa caucus. News cycles are abuzz with speculation about who the candidates will be and what their chances are, but much of this coverage asks the wrong question.

The post A better strategy for presidential candidates appeared first on OUPblog.

Community organizing has been big news lately. Building and rebuilding the interwoven connections that serve as social capital binding us all has never been more important, and we stand poised on the very brink of resurgence.

Back in 2000, Robert Putnam, author of the seminal book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, reported that activities we attended together had fallen off dramatically for 25 years: we were experiencing 43% fewer family dinners and attended club meetings 58% less. The lack of shared experiences in our worlds had reduced our connections with each other.

Now, connecting to each other and our causes is on the rise and the notion of service to others has returned as a national conversation. On Tuesday, President Obama spoke to all of us, saying, “ What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

At First Book, the children we serve don’t have a vote or a choice about their financial circumstance. We provide books to children in need knowing that reading opens worlds of possibilities for them. When kids hold books and experience the joy a story brings, they begin to walk the path of education. Developing a passion for reading in them delivers the promise of a better life through literacy.

In the words of a great community leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

When we give a child a book, we offer them the tools they need to find their own paths, making them a part of the greater community of educated, thoughtful citizen participants builds our communities child by child. There is no greater service.

Get involved with First Book to help make all children readers. Find out how you can help at www.firstbook.org.