Reading Partners shares inspiring volunteerism stories during National Volunteer Week

For Immediate Release

Contact:
Rachel Minnick, Executive Director, Reading Partners Sacramento
rachel.minnick@staging.readingpartners.org, (916) 220-7224

DURING NATIONAL VOLUNTEER MONTH, A VOLUNTEER-LED LITERACY ORGANIZATION IS CELEBRATING THE HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE IN SACRAMENTO FUELING ITS PROVEN IMPACT IN UNDER-RESOURCED COMMUNITIES

(Sacramento, CA) April 11, 2016 — Reading Partners is a national nonprofit that collaborates with community volunteers and local public schools in Sacramento to equip students with the foundational skills they need to be able to read at grade level by fourth grade. The proven early literacy organization has been providing volunteer-led, individualized reading support to students in under-resourced public elementary schools since 1999.

April is National Volunteer Month (and April 10-16 is National Volunteer Week), so Reading Partners is celebrating the tremendous dedication and impact of its thousands of volunteer tutors by sharing a sampling of the uplifting stories playing out every day in Reading Partners reading centers in Sacramento and across its 14 regions.

“Our volunteers are changing lives every day through the power of reading,” said Rachel Minnick, Executive Director of Reading Partners Sacramento. “It’s so inspiring to see the mentoring relationships develop between tutors and students. Not only do students become confident readers, they become confident in themselves.”

Here are a few examples of the countless inspiring stories of high-impact volunteerism taking place in Reading Partners reading centers in Sacramento:

1. The Soroptimist women’s group has expanded their support for literacy beyond Reading Partners to lunch buddies and book giveaways for an entire school.

2. Reading Partners High School Ambassadors recruit their peers to become tutors.

Only 45 percent of Sacramento third graders are reading at a proficient level or above. Reading is the foundation for all future learning. Without developing the reading skills needed to read on grade level, kids won’t have an equitable chance to succeed in school or in life. With the dedication of more than 14,000 volunteer tutors in Sacramento and across the US, Reading Partners’ volunteers are helping more than 10,000 students make the all-important shift from learning to read to reading to learn.

“It never feels like work for me, and I don’t think it does for my student either,” remarked Michael, a Reading Partners volunteer tutor in Sacramento. “We are just hanging out and having fun. But it turns out it’s making an impact on his literacy development.”

To learn more, please visit staging.readingpartners.org/Sacramento.

About Reading Partners

Reading Partners empowers students to succeed in reading and in life by engaging community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring. The national nonprofit organization will provide proven, individualized literacy tutoring to more than 10,000 elementary school students in under-resourced schools across ten states and the District of Columbia in 2016.  Visit staging.readingpartners.org, or connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, to learn more.