Children's Reading Partners of the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford

The mission of Federation's Children's Reading Partners is to build and improve the reading skills of pre-kindergarten to grade five educationally at-risk students in public school districts in Greater Hartford, CT. This is done by recruiting, training, and placing volunteers to read with these students, one-to-one or in small groups, on a consistent weekly basis. Children's Reading Partners promotes the use of books that help children develop emotional intelligence in order to cultivate a culture of kindness and empathy. Children's Reading Partners further expands students reading resources through the annual donation of a book to each student and that student's classroom.

Each year the program recruits, trains and places volunteers to read weekly with children in Hartford and five neighboring communities (Bloomfield, East Hartford, Manchester, New Britain and West Hartford). The components of the current program are:

• Elementary Express - Reading mentors read books for 30 minutes weekly one-on-one with at-risk kindergarten through fifth grade students.
• Reading Buddies - Middle school students read books weekly with a kindergarten student in Hartford and Bloomfield for one month.
• Preschool Pals -Volunteers read with preschool children weekly in Bloomfield for ten weeks in the spring and six weeks in the summer.