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Your organization, business, or church may seek a way to serve your community.
You may have been drawn to literacy mentoring for a variety of reasons:
- It is local. In fact, schools exist in every community.
- It is practical. Reading is a skill that every contributing citizen needs.
- It is personal. Your business needs a reading workforce.
- It is measurable. Your people will see genuine growth.
- It is accessible. It only requires your people to give one hour a week.
One thing that you may not have considered is: Often, it will add almost zero dollars to your budget:
A Literacy Mentoring Program is Often Already Paid For
In the city of Portland, Oregon (like most US cities), when an organization decides to start a literacy mentoring program in an under-resourced school, that program is already paid for.
By whom? Well, just like in almost every city in America, there already exists a literacy organization that is desperate for volunteers. This organization is already fully funded… funded by the local government and by donations from generous citizens.
Incredibly, this organization is actually over-funded. They are functioning at a fraction of their capacity and meeting only a small percentage of the need.
At the same time, this literacy organization has already taken care of all the politics. They already have all the strategic relationships. They have already set the programs in place. They have already funded the administration staff. They have already created the training. And, they will pay for all the necessary procedures like background checks.
Usually, when starting a new program, an organization must research, network, organize, and pay for all these processes.
When you adopt a school— to make sure that every under-resourced child receives the vital gifts of literacy, hope, and self-esteem—you will get to mobilize dozens of your people and do so with near zero impact on your bottom line. It sounds crazy, but it’s true.
