Everybody Wins! CT | Community News | Fox 61 WTIC-TV Connecticut

Everybody Wins! CT

Everybody Wins! CT is a non-profit organization providing reading enrichment programs that engage students, encourage leadership and learning, inspire a love of reading and build stronger communities.

While autonomous, they are an affiliate of Everybody Wins! USA, a national organization that aims to increase children's prospects for success in school and in life.

Power Lunch, Everybody Wins! CT's flagship program recruits volunteer reading mentors from corporations such as CIGNA, Travelers, MetLife and Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company to name a few. These volunteers are then matched one- on- one with an elementary school student. Volunteers read to the student for one half hour, one day a week over the student's lunch period.

Through the student/volunteer relationship the student learns to love books and consequently reads more, raising reading and comprehension levels. Over the course of the year the student is given books to take home to start an at home library. There are over 250 students involved in the Power Lunch Program and last year over 6,500 books were read over the course of the year.

The purpose of the Readers as Leaders program is to recruit, train, and recognize middle-school student volunteers who promote respect for academic performance by reading and distributing books to young children. Middle School students are provided with team building/leadership skills and are taught the value and importance of giving back to the community, being a leader and a role model. They are then matched one- on- one with a kindergarten student who they read to once a week. The middle school student acts as a role model to the kindergarten student and both kindergarten student and middle school student are exposed to the value of books. Both middle school students and kindergarten students take home books over the course of the year which helps them to build their own at home libraries. In the 2006/2007 school year 900 students were involved in the Readers as Leaders Program.