The Chattanooga Area Gang Taskforce gets a boost from a local law firm.
Miller and Martin handed over a $5,000 check this morning.
The Gang Taskforce will use the money to promote literacy.
Members say that's an important tool to fight gangs.
Studies show that kids who don't read by the 4th grade fall behind and drop out by the 9th grade.
Drop outs tend to end up going down the wrong path.
Reading advocates say it should start at home...but that's not always the case.
Pete Cooper, President of Community Foundation, "To be able to teach your child to read you need to be able to read yourself and so you have an obvious problem in certain families where the parents don't read well enough to teach their children to read or quite honestly they're working two jobs and don't have time."
Mark Degler, Miller and Martin, "What this initial contribution will go to is to treat the problem the underlying problem rather than the symptoms and that excites us a lot and we view it as a challenge to other Chattanooga businesses to do the same thing."
The gang task force has been working to comprehensively fight gangs since last year.
