girl scouts of the colonial coast
Girl Scout Ambassador Morgan from Virginia Beach loves
reading and used that passion as the focus to earn her Gold Award, the highest
honor and achievement a Girl Scout can earn.
Morgan learned that reading with
an adult is a foundation for lifelong literacy in young children, however, for
busy parents it can be difficult to find time to read with their children. Morgan
learned that a lack of reading time at home can lead to falling behind in
school so she decided to take action to help children in her community!
To tackle this issue, Morgan formed the Literacy Mentors
Club at her school. She recruited a team of students from her high school to do
weekly readings at Fort Story with John B. Dey Elementary School kindergarten
and first-grade students during the school year. Younger kids loved having opportunities
to spend time reading with older students from the area.
Morgan then planned and executed a summer reading program
that distributed two books a month to over 160 military students from Fort
Story. In addition, she did readings twice a week during the summer program on
the base so parents had a convenient location to bring their children. Overall
Morgan helped deliver 1,000 books and spent over 30 hours reading to children
during her summer program.
The Literacy Mentors Club will continue to bring the fun of reading
to children of military families and will be sustained by sponsoring faculty
from Morgan’s high school.
Along with learning networking skills, how to organize
volunteers and schedule time for a team, Morgan says, “The most successful part
was having the children at Fort Story gain interest and build confidence in
reading.”
Way to go, Morgan!
