Local Nonprofit Reading Power Wins $25,000 State Farm Neighborhood Assist Grant
Local Nonprofit Reading Power Wins $25,000 State Farm Neighborhood Assist Grant, Pivots to Virtual Tutoring, Selected for Case Study by Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business
State Farm Neighborhood Assist has announced the selection of local nonprofit Reading Power as a recipient of a $25,000 grant. Recognized for its work advancing early literacy in under-resourced communities, Reading Power has now developed, piloted, and implemented a new virtual tutoring model to combat COVID-19 school closures. To date, Reading Power has provided over 900 hours of tutor training, and on October 19, successfully launched one-to-one virtual tutoring in North Chicago, IL, for students in kindergarten through second grade. Reading Power's commitment to do more for children in under-served districts is exemplified in its ability to quickly adapt to this unprecedented classroom pause by enabling its students to log on and learn to read with Reading Power tutors without incurring additional educational deficits caused by lost classroom hours. State Farm Neighborhood Assist funding allows Reading Power to enhance and expand its virtual tutoring program through the purchase of books, school supplies, and other literacy and learning resources for its students, and helps improve access to technology for its students.
Carnegie Mellon's Tepper Graduate School of Business has also recognized Reading Power's efforts to do more to improve children's literacy. A team of Tepper MBA students recently selected Reading Power's virtual tutoring program as a case study in its A.T. Kearney Student Lab Program. Carnegie Mellon students share the non-profit's vision and commitment to improve childhood academic and life outcomes, and are working to enhance, scale, and deliver Reading Power's proven, one-to-one virtual literacy tutoring program. Virtual tutoring will allow program expansion to more communities, and foster the development of strategic partnerships with community groups who serve the same populations of students. Together we can do more.
Reading Power Book Purchases Helps More Children
Reading Power has augmented its purchase of high quality, age-appropriate books for children in need. Experts estimate that 61 percent of America's low-income children are growing up in homes without books. Providing well-written, high interest books to children can help break the link between poverty and poor academic outcomes.
Reading Power's professional educators take special care to select books that offer high quality, age appropriate literature. Since Reading Power's work is done in communities of predominantly Black and Latino populations, the organization is committed to improve the positive impact of its reading materials by choosing books that best reflect and relate to its students, their families, and communities. "Reading literature that reflects diversity allows all children to see possibilities," says Director of Programs Lisa Bulzoni, MEd. "All children deserve to see characters in books that look like them doing normal and extraordinary things."
A new program, "Book Buddies," has been launched to support these book purchases. For more information and to donate, please visit www.readingpowerinc.org/donate
About Reading Power Inc.
Reading Power Inc. provides one-to-one literacy tutoring for children in prekindergarten through second grade in North Chicago and Zion, Illinois. Tutoring is generally delivered during the school day by trained volunteer tutors. The students Reading Power serves are 89 percent minority; 86 percent live in poverty.
Data gathered since our program began in 2003, has consistently shown that kindergarten and first grade students tutored by Reading Power achieve four times the gains and second grade two times the gains when compared to their non-tutored peers. Since Reading Power's founding, the nonprofit has tutored more than 4,000 children.
MEDIA INQUIRIES:
DEBBIE GUGGENHEIM
Debbie.Guggenheim@gmail.com