Steele founded Helping Enrich D.C., a nonprofit promoting local, inner-city literacy. Steele started the EarPhone Project and asked volunteers to make recordings of children’s stories. The readings are available through a toll-free number and online. The more than 80 stories are pulled from local curricula and the top reading lists at the D.C. Public Libraries, and the EarPhone Project are still accepting volunteer readers. How did the EarPhone Project start?
I wanted to create something that was supplementary to what children where doing in their daily school curriculum. I see kids on the telephone all the time, at all different ages, I see them using computers, and I thought, “How can I use each of these things to create vehicle to address literacy?”
