UNCP’s Community and Civic Engagement recently partnered with Reading Solutions Incorporated to expand teaching young children how to read and write.
Reading Solutions was founded by its CEO Reginald Oxendine with the mission to increase children’s reading comprehension in grade school.
“We started off with two audio cassette tapes and a book. They [kids] listen to the tape, follow along in the book and learn to read,” Oxendine said.
The website contains “over 300 hours worth of reading, writing and spelling comprehension. With 2,700 full motion videos that teach the reading skills.” The UNCP alumni was also previously a professor at UNCP.
The partnership between Community and Civic Engagement and Reading Solutions allowed students on campus the opportunity to tutor young kids in afterschool programs on their literacy skills.
Currently there are 10 volunteers that spend their time teaching local kids how to read and write.
Jasmine Childs, junior, was hired as a social media manager to help promote Reading Solutions’ message to the local community.
Reading Solutions is now a certified business that students can volunteer at on UNCP volunteering site, UNCP Serve.
Last semester, volunteers from Howard University helped Reading Solutions. The volunteers went to local schools with reading solutions tutors and taught kids literacy skills during afterschool programs.
However, this is not CCE’s first partnership that aided the literacy skills of young kids.
Literacy Commons is another organization CCE has partnered with to help with teaching the younger generation how to read and write.
The office of Community and Civic engagement had this to say about the recent partnership, “This one of UNCP’s many volunteer opportunities to get involved in.”
According to 2003 data from the National Center for Education statistics, 20 percent of the people, 16 years and older, in Robeson County lack the ‘basic prose and literacy skills.”
The overall literacy rate in North Carolina is 14 percent.
For more information about how to get involved around campus visit Community and Civic Engagement website or call 910-521-6136.
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