Make a difference with one hour a week …from your own home!

Reader/Writer is a high impact, low effort literacy initiative that pairs public school adolescents with writing-proficient adult volunteers. Each volunteer serves as a real life audience and writing coach for one or two metro area public middle or high school students in a writing exchange conducted through the mail. This process builds writing fluency and resilience for teens.

Date and location: These writing exchanges take place throughout the academic year;   approximately 2 -3 times per month; from the volunteers own homes and on their own time.

Description of volunteer duties:  Volunteers receive through the mail two short personal essays written by their two assigned students along with a self-addressed stamped envelope and a short note from the teacher.  Writers will be 11th grade students from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis.

Volunteers read the essays, lightly edit each (per teacher’s suggestions in the note), additionally comment on the content of the writing, and mail everything back to the school in the provided envelope.

Volunteer eligibility and training requirements:  Any caring consistent adult who understands basic writing skills and who wishes to interact with and support inner city youth is eligible.  Orientation can be self-done through study of examples and guidelines on the website or through a half-hour meeting with the nonprofit’s facilitator.  If there isn’t a face-to-face meeting, a phone call or email connection with Reader/Writer’s director is requested. When a group of adults is interested, an informational meeting is offered at a site of the group’s choice. 

Physical expectations: The expectation is that the volunteer Reader can read student writing and physically write responses to that writing.

What to wear:  Volunteers are invited once a year to the participating school to meet their student writers for which business attire is suggested.  Other than that, there’s no direct interaction.

Safety information:  Readers (volunteers) are NOT mandated reporters, so if a student writes something troubling, the Reader/Writer program director must be notified and teachers informed.

For  more information interested volunteers please contact:

University Retirees Volunteer Center, by email at  [email protected]