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Inspire Your People
Share this material or media during team meetings or training. (Note: a G-rated version of the documentary film SENTENCED will be available in 2025.) Creating and being a mentoring organization is a community-wide experience. Some of your people will be reading mentors, while others will be “cheerleaders,” truly making this literacy initiative an organization-wide experience.
Identify a Literacy Champion
The most important person in your partnership with a school may be your organization’s Literacy Champion (LC); your organization’s program coordinator. They are entrusted by your congregation to:
- Be a liaison between your organization and the literacy organization/school staff.
- Regularly communicate mentoring needs and partnership updates.
- Recruit and help manage the training of all volunteers (in cooperation with the literacy partners), ensuring that your organization always “under-promises and over-delivers.”
- Encourage and ensure follow-through, demonstrating that your organization keeps its word, serves generously, and expresses its “love without agenda” policy.
Find a School In Need
We encourage all organizations to begin by contacting their local literacy organization. They have already done the hard work of establishing a structure, training, and culture of trust with the local schools.
NOTE: If there is no such reliable literacy organization in your area, make an appointment with your local elementary school’s volunteer coordinator.
Recruit Your Mentor Team
Experience tells us the best recruitment happens when the leadership shares a video and a message about the importance of literacy and mentoring to the entire organization. Mission and passion begin at the top.
The more people who share in the mentoring experience, the greater the transformation for your community. Your LC will then lead your volunteers through the preparation steps (as outlined by the literacy organization) and assign mentoring locations.
Stay Active
All organizational leaders, especially the LC, should join the Children’s Literacy Project update list.
The LC should stay up-to-date on partnership updates and media materials (not to mention local stories of inspiration) and consistently (monthly, for example) share those stories, statistics, and successes with their volunteers.
