Church & Community Group Information
Our church or non-profit organization would like to help struggling readers in our community. (Or, I'd like to help our church/non-profit get involved) How can we get started?
If you are an organization or church that would like to help children in your community, training is free for your volunteers if they attend our scheduled fall training and a letter of sponsorship is provided. You can start simply and quickly, with just one volunteer who has a desire to help struggling readers.
We recommend the following:
- If there are one to five individuals in an organization that want to start a tutoring outreach, they should each register online individually and provide a completed sponsorship form from the organization and attend the free training in the fall.
- Each trained tutor will be provided with their own Reading Outreach tutor tote, containing everything they need to start helping their first student. Your tutor, church or organization will then need to get the word out, to find students who are in need of reading help. Announcements and flyers usually bring a quick response from families seeking help, or you may already be aware of a need.
- Keep in mind that your organization will be the sponsor and in charge of any reading volunteers and outreach sponsored by you, NOT Reading Outreach. We simply provide the training and tools to make it easy for you to get started. The sponsoring organization will provide access to required clearances and allow the program to operate under their requirements and guidelines. We will always be available for further support and training if needed.
- To start: we recommend that potential students be evaluated at the beginning and end of 6 months to determine need and progress made. Reading Outreach can provide the initial and ending evaluations for a small fee of $25 per evaluation. We also plan to offer future training in how to evaluate readers, so that, if preferred, a person or person(s) from your organization can conduct them after a successful 6-month period with at least one tutor and student.
- Once potential students are evaluated, your tutor(s) can begin meeting with them one-on-one to provide reading help.
- Follow these steps to start simply and small. If you grow beyond a few volunteers and want to establish a larger outreach, we can provide further training for your leadership so that you'll be able to successfully grow to train more volunteers and reach more students who need reading help.
See the sponsorship and registration links for more information and to get started! If you have further questions, contact Janet Smith at readingoutreach121@gmail.com.
Fall Tutor Training Registration Sponsorship Form