Reading For Change

Reading for Change met and exceeded our first-year expectations. The program concept was created in may of 2015, and by september we had a building, 25 dedicated volunteers, three literacy experts, and five students enrolled in the program. We were thankful to start with a relatively small number of students, which allowed our team time to streamline our program processes. By the end of 2015, we had fifteen 1st - 3rd-grade students attending the program regularly, which filled our original building to capacity. In our first year, we retained all of our students and had no problems with student attendance. We found that students who began the program discouraged and lacking literacy skills quickly fell in love with Reading and were actively Reading both at the program and at home. It was challenging to define quantifiable literacy returns from the fall 2015 semester because it was the first semester of the program. However, we found an average 76% increase in Reading comprehension and 83% increase in fluency. We also served over 300 dinners to our students in 2015. Our first year was an exciting start for the program and set Reading for Change up for growth in 2016.