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April 11, 2016

Reading Partners North Texas shares inspiring volunteerism stories during National Volunteer Week

For Immediate Release

Contact:
Telesa Walton, Community Engagement Director, Reading Partners North Texas
telesa.walton@readingpartners.org(214) 300-8584

DURING NATIONAL VOLUNTEER WEEK, A VOLUNTEER-LED LITERACY ORGANIZATION IS CELEBRATING THE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN NORTH TEXAS FUELING ITS PROVEN IMPACT IN UNDER-RESOURCED COMMUNITIES

(Dallas, TX) April 11, 2016 — Reading Partners is a national nonprofit that collaborates with community volunteers and local public schools in North Texas 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 North Texas and across its 14 regions.

“North Texas tutors deliver the mission daily to struggling readers and help in reaching our goal of improving 4th grade reading proficiency,” said Telesa Walton, Community Engagement Director at Reading Partners North Texas.

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

  1. A truancy officer at Martin Luther King Jr. Learning Center discovered the reason one of her students was assigned to her, she just wanted to return to Reading Partners this school year! The officer dropped into the Reading Center to learn more about our program, and opted to become the student’s tutor as she did indeed qualify for the program again and her behavior and reading has improved greatly.

  2. Twelve police officers from the Community Engagement Department make time in their busy schedules to help ignite a passion for reading at KIPP Truth Elementary School.

  3. Members of First United Methodist Church of Dallas are tutoring with Reading Partners at JJ Rhoads Learning Center and changing lives in the process – both their students’ and their own.

According to the results of the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 16 percent of low-income fourth graders in Texas are proficient readers for their grade-level. 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 North Texas 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.

“I decided to be a reading partner because I believe our future can only be as healthy as we are educated. And education starts with reading,” remarked Sherrye Bass, a Reading Partners North Texas volunteer tutor. “The ability to read can make all the difference in the life of a child and each child is our collective future. The education of children is critical no matter what our political or social views.”

To learn more, please visit ReadingPartners.org/NorthTexas.

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 readingpartners.org, or connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, to learn more.

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