BALTIMORE — For over four decades, National Volunteer Week has given nonprofits an opportunity to recognize the invaluable support of volunteers that help fuel their work.
In celebration of National Volunteer Week in 2018 (April 15-21), Reading Partners Baltimore created a list highlighting the top five ways its volunteers make the community stronger and better.
Here are the top five reasons:
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Volunteers drive student impact— Volunteers are working one-on-one with more than 750 students this year in Baltimore to help deliver meaningful results for kids (last year, 81 percent of Reading Partners’ Kindergarten through second-grade students in Baltimore mastered key foundational reading skills needed to read at grade level).
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By promoting educational equity, volunteers strengthen the broader community— Everyone benefits in the long run when student literacy achievement is bolstered. Students who don’t read proficiently by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. It’s estimated that every student who walks out of the classroom without a diploma costs our society $260,000 in lost earnings, taxes, and productivity.
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Volunteers serve as a resource multiplier— Because Reading Partners engages so many community volunteers in their work, the program is more affordable for schools to implement than other literacy interventions. For every dollar invested in reading partners, the program delivers more than $2 in resources to students.
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Volunteers support strong public schools— Thanks to the involvement of 1,100 community tutors in Baltimore, 97 percent of teachers report Reading Partners is valuable to their school and 100 percent of principals report improved school-wide reading progress.
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Volunteers help bring joy to learning— Students feed off of the energy and excitement of Reading Partners’ volunteer tutors. In Baltimore, 95 percent of volunteers are satisfied with their tutoring experience and that enthusiasm helps students develop a lifelong love of reading that is key to success in school and beyond.
“Our ability to serve hundreds of students across our city is made possible through our volunteers,” said Jeffrey Zwillenberg, executive director, Reading Partners Baltimore. “And beyond this reach, it is these same volunteer tutors who are creating life-changing opportunities by delivering the gift of reading to their students. We are more than just a one-on-one literacy tutoring program — we are a volunteer and community driven organization seeking to create educational equity for our entire city.”
Reading Partners is a national nonprofit that collaborates with community volunteers and local public schools in Baltimore and in 13 other regions across the country to equip students with the foundational skills they need to be able to read at grade level by fourth grade.
Reading Partners Baltimore is constantly looking for more local volunteers to commit just an hour a week to work individually with children who struggle with reading. To become a volunteer with Reading Partners,visit: readingpartners.org/volunteer today.