April Coachella Valley Spotlight recipient: Read With Me Volunteer Programs

Read With Me Volunteer Programs is a local non-profit that helps children in low-income, limited English speaking environments develop to their fullest potential by learning to read, comprehend and speak English.

RWM volunteers typically provide more than 24,000 free hours of tutoring annually to develop students’ mastery of key foundational reading skills needed to read at least at grade level

Whenever RWM engages with a new school, they establish a local “community partner” to focus support on that school by recruiting and supervising volunteers. These community partners include churches, country clubs, senior citizen centers, and retirement communities. They underwrite the cost of special projects for the schools themselves.

RWM buys books and does volunteer book drives to provide between two and four books for each of the 10,000 children in the 14 participating Coachella Valley schools to take home.

The organization also funds bus transportation to take volunteers to schools.

Volunteers work in the classroom on campus under the direction of the teacher, using materials assigned by the teacher and with specific students.

The group plans to use the $25,000 grant to buy more than 2,000 books for the kids to take home.