Sidebar: Elements of a Strong Partnership
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Photo by Larry Mayer, The Billings Gazette Deaconess Medical Center CEO Nick Wolter |
The America Reads Challenge is grounded in community partnerships. The 61 funded tutoring programs described in this report represent more than 450 literacy partners, supporting educators, parents, community volunteers, and others in helping children increase their reading achievement levels. These partners include schools, libraries, colleges and universities, businesses, National Service organizations, private and public foundations, religious organizations, youth groups, and other community organizations.
Two examples illustrate the range and creativity of the America Reads Challenge partnerships:
Book Buddies in the Bronx created a four-way partnership between a New York school district in one of the poorest congressional districts in the nation and three organizations with ties to the local community: the Community Service Society of New York's Retired & Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), VISTA, and the University of Virginia. The partners in this innovative alliance successfully transplanted Book Buddies, a reading intervention program begun in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991, to six elementary schools in the South Bronx, an area with a large bilingual and minority community.
Montana Reads gained momentum when staff members from a hospital in Billings, Montana, indicated they wanted to increase community involvement. A nearby elementary school jumped at the chance. McKinley Elementary had made improving literacy a schoolwide goal and recently had adopted the America Reads program. When school staff members heard of Deaconess Billings Clinic's desire to help out in the community, they approached the hospital for volunteer tutors and were warmly received. In addition to other community volunteers, 11 hospital employees have been trained as tutors and regularly take the two-block stroll over to the grade school. America Reads has served as a springboard for other hospital employees' involvement at the school: One cardiac surgeon dissected a pig's heart to support school curriculum on the circulatory system, and other hospital employees are working on community service projects with the students.
Story continues …
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