Reading Partners featured in Nicholas Kristof’s 2021 Holiday Impact Prize

For Immediate Release

Contact:

Christine Pannell

Sr. Communications Manager, Reading Partners Baltimore

(443) 466-6690 | christine.pannell@staging.readingpartners.org

Washington Post writer recognizes literacy nonprofit as volunteer opportunity to impact Baltimore, local communities

BALTIMORE, MD, Dec. 9, 2021 — For the second year in a row, Reading Partners has been featured in two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s Holiday Impact Prize, printed in the Washington Post.

Across the country, Reading Partners mobilizes community volunteers to provide students with the one-on-one support they deserve to read at grade-level. In Baltimore, Reading Partners has delivered over 165,000 individualized tutoring sessions (both in person and through its online tutoring platform, Reading Partners Connects) since it first launched in the 2011-12 school year. Over the past decade, Reading Partners Baltimore has enrolled over 4,150 students with the help of more than 4,300 community volunteers. Additional volunteers recruited through Kristof’s 2021 Holiday Impact Prize will help Reading Partners Baltimore serve even more students in 2021-22 and in the years to come.

“It is an incredible honor to be recognized by Nicholas Kristof and his Holiday Impact Prize for the second year in a row! We know that it will take everyone working together to realize Reading Partners’ vision for a future where all students have the reading skills to reach their full potential, and this is the perfect time to join us, support students, and impact Baltimore’s future leaders,” said Jeffrey Zwillenberg, Sr. Executive Director of Reading Partners Baltimore. 

Reading Partners was one of two organizations recognized by the Holiday Impact Prize as volunteer opportunities for Post readers looking to mentor young people in their communities. Currently, Reading Partners is serving students at 15 school partners throughout the city, and volunteers can support students’ reading journeys through one-on-one online tutoring.

Since 2009, Kristof has written an annual “holiday gift guide” column to highlight organizations working to make the world a better place. He began writing the gift guide to bridge a philanthropic gap: readers who wanted to help but didn’t know how, and mission-driven individuals and organizations who needed resources but were off donors’ radar. Focusing Philanthropy is providing the platform for this initiative by processing readers’ contributions, monitoring and reporting on results, and replenishing credit card transaction costs of donations made on KristofImpact.org so that 100 cents on the dollar will support the winning organizations.

More information about Nicholas Kristof’s Holiday Impact Prize, this year’s winners, and Focusing Philanthropy can be found at KristofImpact.org.

By giving a gift or tutoring a student one-on-one for about an hour a week through Reading Partners Baltimore, donors and volunteers can make an impact that can quite literally alter the course of a child’s educational experience and beyond.

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About Reading Partners

For over 20 years, Reading Partners has helped empower students to succeed in school and beyond by engaging community volunteers to provide one-on-one literacy tutoring. Since its founding, the national nonprofit organization has mobilized over 70,000 community volunteers to provide proven, individualized literacy tutoring to nearly 70,000 elementary school students in over 450 under-resourced schools across ten states and the District of Columbia. Visit staging.readingpartners.org to learn more about our program impact and our Reading Partners Connects online program innovation, or connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Reading Partners is a proud AmeriCorps service partner.