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Inspire Your Congregation
Share Children’s Literacy Project™ materials or media during worship services or church gatherings. (Note: a G-rated version of SENTENCED is scheduled to be available in 2025.) Being a literacy church is a community experience. Some of your parishioners will be reading mentors, while others will be “cheerleaders,” making this literacy initiative an organization-wide experience.
Identify a Literacy Champion
The most important person in your partnership with a school may be your faith community’s Literacy Champion (LC) (volunteer and site coordinator). They are entrusted by your congregation to:
- Be a liaison between your church and the literacy organization/school staff.
- Regularly communicate mentoring needs and partnership updates.
- Recruit and help manage the training of all volunteers (in cooperation with the literacy partners), ensuring that your congregation always “underpromises and over-delivers.”
- Encourage and ensure follow-through, demonstrating that the church keeps its word, serves generously, and expresses its “love without agenda” policy.
Find a School in Need
We encourage all organizations to begin by contacting their local literacy organization. They have already done the hard work of establishing a structure, training, and culture of trust with the local schools.
Note: If there is no such reliable literacy organization in your area, make an appointment with your local elementary school’s volunteer coordinator.
Recruit Your Mentor Team
Experience tells us that the best recruitment happens when a pastor shares a video and a message about the importance of literacy and mentoring with the congregation.
When more of your parishioners share the mentoring experience, your entire community will be transformed. Your Literacy Champion will then lead your volunteers through the preparation steps (as outlined by the literacy organization) and assign mentoring locations.
Stay Active
All organizational leaders (especially the Literacy Champion) should join the Children’s Literacy Project™ update list.
The Literacy Champion should stay up-to-date on literacy updates and media materials (not to mention local stories of inspiration) and consistently (monthly) share those stories, statistics, and successes with their volunteers.
