Reading Partners Tulsa seeks volunteers to foster lifelong readers

Originally posted on News on 6

People are needed to help kids in the Tulsa area get better at reading. The goal of Reading Partners Tulsa is to make every child a lifelong reader.

Find the joy of reading. That’s the mission of Olivia Martin and Reading Partners Tulsa.

“Reading is the way to build empathy; it’s the way to build civil engagement; it’s the way to inspire people to lead, helps us listen to each other better,” Martin said.

She serves as the Executive Director of the nonprofit, which helps students improve their reading skills. She says the way that improvement happens is through people signing up to volunteer.

“The more people who are able to tutor and volunteer their time, the fewer and fewer students will be on our waitlist,” said Martin.

People can volunteer in 26 different schools across the Tulsa and Union School districts for an hour each week.

Martin says that experience in education is not necessary to become a volunteer.

“Building up letter sounds, how to decode words, vocabulary, comprehension,” she said. “Those things are built for our tutors.”

More than 350,000 tutoring sessions have taken place since Reading Partners Tulsa started 10 years ago. As Martin looks to the future, her goal is not for the organization to exist in the next decade but to have a lasting impact on the community.

“We will go do other things because every student around will have all the support that he or she needs to be a good reader before going into middle school.”

Until then, she hopes volunteers will sign up to help students reach their full potential of becoming lifelong readers.