Volunteer

Do you like to read aloud to preschool children?  Do you believe that reading to children is important?  If you do, you will want to volunteer for Ready Readers.  Ready Readers is a unique, award-winning volunteer program in St. Louis.  Currently, more than 450 trained volunteers read weekly to preschool children ages 2-5 from low income communities who attend 116 early childhood centers in the St. Louis area.

Volunteers read for 30 minutes each week, at a time that is mutually agreed upon by both the teacher and the volunteer reader.  They read to the same classroom of children for an entire school year, which allows for the readers to develop a relationship with each child and for the children to associate a special person with the fun of reading.  Ready Readers provides a 90 minute training session for all new volunteer readers, as well as quarterly workshops.

Six times during each school year (and once during the summer for those students in session), Ready Readers provides volunteer readers with new books for each child in their classes.  After reading the stories, volunteers personally distribute these books to the children for further enjoyment at home.  During the 2009-2010 school year, Ready Readers gave more than 49,000 new books to the preschool children.

For more information, contact Diane Sinclair, our Volunteer Program Coordinator, at diane@readyreaders-stlouis.com.  The Ready Readers staff will work to schedule your volunteer experience at a time that meets your needs and ours.  You must be at least 13 years old to be a reader and readers under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.

Happy Reading!