{"id":853,"date":"2025-04-30T17:26:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T17:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/?p=853"},"modified":"2025-05-02T17:47:51","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T17:47:51","slug":"reading-changed-my-life-dr-ben-carson-brings-message-of-hope-to-shepherd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/2025\/04\/30\/reading-changed-my-life-dr-ben-carson-brings-message-of-hope-to-shepherd\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Reading changed my life\u2019: Dr. Ben Carson brings message of hope to Shepherd"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr. Ben Carson, the renowned surgeon and former U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development, stressed the transformative power of reading during a roundtable discussion with community leaders on April 16 at Shepherd Community Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carson knows that power firsthand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During an episode of Shepherd\u2019s \u201cBreaking the Cycle of Poverty\u201d podcast, Carson noted that he struggled as a young student growing up in Detroit, but with his mother\u2019s encouragement, he became an avid reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carson earned a scholarship to Yale University, was accepted to medical school where he trained as a surgeon, and eventually became the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by a love for reading, Carson and his wife Candy launched the Ben Carson Reading Project, which has opened 300 fully equipped reading rooms in schools across the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe fact that reading changed my life completely, we decided to start putting these rooms in \u2026 they\u2019re places where no kid is going to pass it up because the way that they\u2019re decorated,\u201d Carson told The Indianapolis Recorder<\/a>. \u201cIn many cases, they get points for the books they read, which they can trade in for prizes, which attracts them in the beginning, but after they learn how to read, they just enjoy the reading itself, and usually their grades improve tremendously as they become readers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to meeting with students and recording a podcast episode during his visit to Shepherd, Carson also engaged with community leaders at the roundtable, which was moderated by Indianapolis City-County Council President Vop Osili.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of schools that cater to the people who come from the Title I type neighborhood, where the emphasis has truly been on education, not on social issues \u2014 which I think are better handled at home and through the church \u2014 and let the school really concentrate on making that person a viable candidate for anything,\u201d Carson said during the roundtable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carson\u2019s investment in education extends to creation of the Carson Scholars Fund in 1994. The fund has awarded more than 12,000 scholarships to students since it was founded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese young people have a 98% four-year college graduation rate. That is by leaps and bounds higher than the national average. Even among our best universities, no one is finishing four years 98% of the time,\u201d Cordell Carter, CEO of the Carson Scholars Fund, told The Recorder. \u201cWell, what if that number was 25,000 and what if those kids were coming from Title I neighborhoods? I think we would see a massive positive change in this world, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re aiming to do, working right here in places like the Shepherd Center.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Ben Carson, the renowned surgeon and former U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development, stressed the transformative power of reading during a roundtable discussion with community leaders on April 16 at Shepherd Community Center. Carson knows that power firsthand. During an episode of Shepherd\u2019s \u201cBreaking the Cycle of Poverty\u201d podcast, Carson noted that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-profile-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}