On the first day of Power Read last fall, 5-year-old Honor was in tears, grabbing books out of his mentor’s hands as he tried to read.
“He didn’t want any part of it,” says Christine Russell, regional coordinator for Power Read, a partnership between United Way of Central Iowa and Everybody Wins! Iowa. The program pairs volunteer mentors with struggling readers at dozens of area elementary schools, with most reading together over lunch for 40 minutes a week.