Mission Statement
YMCA READS! believes that the connection a child makes with a caring adult, during their formative years, has a profound effect on their success - both academically and personally!
Our goal is to help those children, who struggle to read at grade level, to improve their literacy skills, while helping them to develop their self-esteem.
Help the future of our community today, by investing time in our most valuable resource - our children.
Description
The Sarasota Family YMCA, along with the Governor's Mentoring Initiative and community volunteers, like yourself, have joined together to create an after-school mentoring and literacy program, for K-3rd grade children, at Gocio Elementary School.
We provide an individualized curriculum for students, that focuses on literacy. Each session emphasizes reading skills in fluency, phonics and comprehension and also allow mentors the opportunity to teach a child to value reading, for reading's sake. This program carefully matches community volunteers, with a child who is striving to read, at grade level. This allows the child to develop a strong relationship with his or her mentor, as it is based on trust. As a result, a mentor also has the rare privilege of helping a child to develop their own self-esteem!
Volunteers can choose their own schedules. The program is Monday through Friday, from 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm AND/OR 4:45 pm - 5:45 pm. You may volunteer for as few or as many one-hour sessions, per week, as you would like.
