Project Beanstalk - Helping Young Children Master Reading
Project Beanstalk is all about making young children in school divert their attention to reading and help them improve their skill.
It's all about working with children and have a passion for reading
Beanstalk primarily trains and supports volunteers (Trained Reading Helpers) to read with children in Primary Schools. Each volunteer mentors three kids to love reading with the help of books, games, and discussions. The clients for Beanstalk are the schools that take up their service, the beneficiaries are the children who need the practice to improve their reading skills with a mentor-figure who spends time reading along with them.
Ideally, each volunteer is assigned a Primary school where they mentor three kids, one-to-one, outside the classroom for twice a week for a minimum of one year. As they get to know the child, they use books, games, based on the interest of the child.
Most volunteers at Beanstalk are Trained Reading Helpers, some by invitation go on to do other roles like recruiting volunteers, interviewing selected volunteers and much more. The “Reading Role Models” Scheme helps train and support groups of sixth formers to volunteer. The Corporate Social Responsibility scheme involves corporate employees to take part.
Let's hear from Beanstalk
We asked Rachel Ellis from Project Beanstalk about the volunteers in her organization:
"As a volunteering organisation, our volunteers carry out our frontline work with our beneficiaries. Our core work is our volunteering role which hasn't changed since we were founded in 1973, so volunteers are the lifeblood of what we do. We are getting better at actively involving volunteers in planning especially as we add new volunteering roles, but there is still room for improvement here."
How does Beanstalk feel about Volunteer Centre Croydon?
Here’s what Rachel Ellis from project Beanstalk feels about Volunteer Centre Croydon:
“Over one in ten of current volunteers in Croydon heard about us from Volunteer Centre Croydon. Without your support recruiting volunteers we wouldn't be able to support as many schools and children as we do. Because we are quite selective about who volunteers with us, one in five enquiries from Volunteer Centre Croydon end up volunteering with us. That puts you just behind our best source of enquiries which is word of mouth, where one on four enquiries end up volunteering with us - so Volunteer Centre Croydon is a great source of committed volunteers.”
