Leaders from the Everybody Wins! Iowa program and the Gamma Delta Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi International sorority visited the Perry Elementary School Friday as part the literacy group’s sixth annual Power Reading Month celebration. This is Perry Elementary’s first year in the Everybody Wins! Iowa program.
Between Oct. 17 and Nov. 17, each of the 69 central Iowa programs — including Perry’s — received deliveries of new books for young readers in need. The gift books highlight the importance of Everybody Wins! Iowa’s Power Reading program, according the Karen Ligas, executive director of Everybody Wins! Iowa.
“Power Reading promotes the power of literacy and of mentors through the local media, and thanks school sponsors and volunteers for their outstanding work throughout the past year,” Ligas said Friday in Perry.
Along with the books, Ligas presented third-grade students with literacy packets filled with reading games and activities, and all the students and reading mentors took part in a bookmark-making exercise.
While the Power Reading books stay at school, the third graders also received more than 100 books to take home with them, thanks to a donation from the Gamma Delta Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi International, a sorority dedicated to helping in various ways throughout the community.
Gamma Delta members Sue Leslie and Mary Lou Stromquist presented the books to the young readers at Perry Elementary. Stromquist said the books were collected through the diligent efforts of Gamma Delta member Melinda Hamilton, who could not be present Friday to give them to the children. Hamilton was able to buy more than 100 age-appropriate books for less than $100, Leslie said.
Chris Mason, president of the Everybody Wins! Iowa Board of Directors, thanked Leslie and Stromquist for their generous donation and explained to the third graders that Delta Gamma is a professional sorority that they too can join when they go to college.
“I’m happy to tell you that students and mentors in the Perry program have so far read 720 books and more than 24,000 pages,” Mason said. About a dozen volunteer reading mentors work one-on-one with the Perry third graders for one hour weekly, reading but also chatting and eating lunch and generally having fun.
Mason said more than 1,700 elementary students in central Iowa are not reading at grade level today, and they would greatly benefit from a reading mentor. He thanked the reading mentors in Perry’s Everybody Wins! Iowa program for their dedication to reading.
Ligas said Power Read is Everybody Wins! Iowa’s literacy and mentoring program in which students are paired one-to-one with caring adult volunteer reading mentors. Reading mentors visit their student for one hour each week, and the students and reading mentors spend their time talking, reading aloud and instilling positive attitudes about reading.
Reading mentors also serve as role models to enhance students’ self-esteem and encourage their success through these consistent weekly positive interactions, she said. The programs now include before-school, after-school, lunch-time, evening and summer programs.
Everybody Wins! Iowa served more than 550 children in 21 Des Moines area schools and through five community organizations during the 2015-2016 program year. Ligas said 92 percent of Everybody Wins! Iowa students improved or maintained their literacy skills, and reading pairs read some 10,041 books — that’s 346,086 pages — with volunteer reading mentors contributing more than 8,000 hours to the Everybody Wins! Iowa program.
Along with Perry, the program currently serves youngsters in Ankeny, Des Moines, Indianola, Norwalk, Pella and West Des Moines. For more information about Everybody Wins! Iowa or to volunteer, visit their website or call 515-277-7590.
