Computers Ready to donate!

We are stocking up on refurbished Dell Optiplex and iMac computers.

We will be donating lots of computers this fall to schools and outreach programs that need computer labs and computers for classrooms.

Reader to Reader’s Computer Donation Program donates new computers and e-readers, and refurbished Dell and Apple computers to schools with strong need for access to technology. The used computers are donated and refurbished by Amherst College and have been serviced by their IT department to be completely ready to run right out of the box. Computer labs have been built on the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Nation, western Massachusetts, Costa Rica, Ghana, Kosovo, Nicaragua, and Trinidad & Tobago.

Computer Lab Generates Excitement in Saviefe-Deme, Ghana

A new computer lab is up and running in the rural village of Saviefe-Deme in Ghana. Classes are being offered for students of all ages.

The lab was created this past year by John Barber and Ghana ACT in partnership with Reader to Reader.

Reader to Reader donated refurbished Dell Optipex 720 computers and Ghana ACT transported them to Ghana and set up the lab.

This June, Reader to Reader donated three additional flat-screen monitors and we are working on donating a number of additional refurbished Dell computers.

The computer lab is located at the town’s middle school.

Reader to Reader’s Computer Donation program is run in partnership with Amherst College and provides refurbished Dell Optiplex computers and iMacs to schools and libraries throughout the United States and across the globe.

Leading Book Discussions on the Navajo Nation

Amherst College students serving as reading mentors in Reader to Reader’s Navajo Mentoring Program led book discussions at St. Michael Indian School in St. Michaels, Arizona.

With the guidance of Reader to Reader's Navajo Outreach Coordinator, Ophelia Hu, mentors and students discussed Elie Wiesel’s holocaust novel Night.

Reader to Reader staff and the four college students are spending nine days touring the Navajo and Hopi reservations where they are visiting schools that receive book donations and literacy programs from Reader to Reader.

Reader to Reader’s Navajo Outreach Coordinator is funded through the generous support of the Fordham Street Foundation, the Hiatt Family Foundation, and Jean and Lynn Miller.

Another Computer Lab Unveiled in Ghana

With the help of Reader to Reader’s Computer Donation Program, a new computer lab has opened at the middle school in Saviefe-Deme, Ghana, as a part of Reader to Reader’s ongoing Ghana Project.

Residents of Saviefe-Deme were invited to tour the lab and on the day these photos were taken the whole town was going through it.

Reader to Reader’s Computer Donation program is run in partnership with Amherst College and provides refurbished Dell Optiplex computers and iMacs to schools and libraries across the United States and across the globe.

Costa Rica Library Project Starts 3rd Year

(A group of students from Amherst College, plus a student from Reed College, are in Costa Rica for the summer working on the Beyond el Campo project. Over the past two summers, the Reader to Reader project built a community library and ran literacy programs in the coffee-farming village of Santa Cruz. Here is their first report.)

We finally made it to Costa Rica! We arrived in Santa Cruz on Wednesday afternoon and met our host families. After settling in, we all met at the library and discussed ideas for what needs to be done this summer. On Thursday, we toured Santa Cruz in the morning, and in the afternoon we did some much-needed cleaning in the library. Friday, we went to the elementary school and met with the principal to discuss a potential partnership between the school and the library, and watched the children’s soccer match. After lunch, we finished cleaning the library, stabilized the bookshelves, and reorganized all of the books. This included familiarizing ourselves with the library’s catalog system, cataloging new books, updating the call numbers, and synchronizing the electronic database with the books on hand. We then met with Joanna, a Spanish teacher at the high school, and offered the library as a resource. Both the elementary and high school teachers were receptive and eager to collaborate with us.

On Saturday, Alex and Ned went to San Jose to buy new books, soccer ball shaped beanbags, educational posters, flash cards, and art supplies for the library. They also talked with people in three different bookstores to arrange bulk purchases of books that the elementary and high school teachers had asked us to stock for their students. Sergio’s father donated free soccer turf to use as a carpet for our soccer-themed reading area. Ali, Caitlin, Rose, and Emma stayed in Santa Cruz and made and distributed fliers to advertise our meet-and-greet that we hosted in the library on Sunday. The girls also bought ingredients to make cookies. We spent four hours and baked a hundred cookies.

On Sunday, we finished organizing the books and went to church, after which we had our meet and greet with free coffee and cookies that we made. It was a huge success; the library was packed, and we met many of the locals. Over fifty books were checked out that day as well. On Monday, we sanded the library’s ceiling and met with a group of high school students to present our thoughts about how the library could better serve the community. They gave us much positive feedback and also suggested some movies that we could show on our weekly movie nights. Today, we began to repaint the outside of the library, and primed and painted the ceiling all day. When we arrived, the ceiling was an unfinished, splotchy grey. Now, the ceiling is a bright sky blue and will include painted clouds and a sun.

For the upcoming week, we will be going to the elementary school to tutor a couple of children with learning disabilities, visit English classes and help out with some fun activities. We will visit the high school to host a cooking class, and continue to clean and paint the library.

Gaining College Knowledge

Students at St. Michael Indian School in St. Michael Arizona watched the latest video produced through Reader to Reader's CollegeKnowledge partnership and then skyped with college students at Dartmouth College.

The students also held an in-person Q&A with Melissa Aybar, an Amherst College student that was visiting as a part of the Reader to Reader team.

CollegeKnowledge is a comprehensive college counseling program that provides disadvantaged Native American students with the best and most accurate information about all forms of higher education and access to experts in the field. The heart of the program are videos produced by Dartmouth College’s Native American Program in partnership with Reader to Reader. After watching each video, the students do college access activities and skype with the students in the Native American Program.

Only 65% of Native students receive a high school diploma. Worse, only 10% will earn a college degree. This is less than half the national average. In the fall of 2012, Reader to Reader will provide an on-site coordinator on the Navajo Nation to facilitate all programs related to the goal of boosting Native American college attendance and graduation.

Empowering Navajo youth through education will develop a new generation of strong leaders who will improve the condition of their people.

Grant Boosts Mentoring Program

Reader to Reader has been awarded a $7,500 grant from the Eugene A. Dexter Charitable Fund through the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. The grant supports the Springfield Mentoring Program which works with at-risk students in the Springfield Public Schools. The year-long program brings high schools students and Amherst College student reading mentors together to read and discuss books in order to foster a love of reading and boost academic achievement.

A special thank you to the Eugene A. Dexter Charitable Fund and the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts for this grant.

At the Window Rock

Reader To Reader took time out to visit the beautiful Window Rock in Window Rock, Arizona, the capital of the Navajo Nation.

Pictured are Amherst College students, Kat Libby and Alex Strecker. Who are spending their week assisting teachers at nearby St. Michael Indian School in St. Michaels, Arizona.

Group Book Discussion

Reader To Reader volunteers, Kat Libby and Alex Strecker, led a book discussion at St. Michael Indian School in St. Michaels, Arizona.

Reader to Reader is spending the week on the Navajo Nation, working with librarians and school officials.

The Amherst College students led insightful book discussions for two sophomore classes that were exploring Alice Walker’s short story Everyday Use.

Reading Mentors Hard at Work

Our Amherst College reading mentors have been hard at work corresponding with children across the United States. The energetic team of 40 college students manage to cover 81 books, all while juggling their own heavy class loads.

Reader To Reader’s Doris Hiatt Mentoring Program and Navajo Mentoring Program bring together children from low-income backgrounds and college student reading mentors to read books and discuss them online in a specially designed forum. The students not only receive positive feedback and academic support, but also much-needed role models.

Amherst Student Links With College Organization to Help Costa Rican Village

The Amherst Student
By Diana Torres '12, News Section Editor

Every summer, thousands of American college students work in third world countries to help “make a difference in the world”. They build houses in remote Mexican towns, tutor children in Uganda or give poor Nicaraguan women microfinance loans to help them start their own businesses. During their stay, students are often shocked by the abject poverty they find and try to lend a helping hand.

However, most student experiences end with the summer when they come back to the United States and return to their comparatively privileged lives. Cait Scudder ’11, however, was not satisfied by volunteering for merely three short months after her stay in Costa Rica this past summer. The villagers’ poor living conditions were too grim, too sad and too unjust for her to continue living a comfortable life without remembering the people she saw struggling everyday to put food on the table.

Scudder returned to the College with a new mission. She wanted to make a sustainable difference in the community she worked in, and to her, the best way to do so was to help improve the poor education system she saw in the town.

Santa Cruz de León Cortés, the small town she volunteered at, does not provide children with a quality education. The children do not have access to books and they do not know how to use the 12 donated computers idly sitting in their computer lab. In the high school’s 2008 graduating class, only 50 percent of students graduated, while only one student went on to pursue a university education. And amongst the adults in the community, only a few have a high school education. According to Scudder, “The cycle of academic underachievement and general disinterest originates from a lack of adequate available resources that are crucial to inspire success.”

To change this situation, Scudder decided to partner up with “Reader To Reader,” an on-campus organization that provides books, computers and tutoring services to underprivileged communities. Through this partnership, Scudder created “Beyond El Campo,” an organization committed to providing educational resources to the Santa Cruz community. Through fundraising, grant and letter writing, Scudder plans to raise enough money to build a new library in the high school during the summer of 2010. A certified library technician from Hartford will teach community members how to run the library sustainably and how to use the available computers to enhance students’ learning experience. Once this is done, bilingual Amherst students will begin tutoring Santa Cruz scholars through an online blogging system. Scudder hopes that the program will help reduce the drop-out rate, increase student reading in and outside of the classroom, raise the graduation rate, provide the high school with the initial resources it needs in order to grow and become sustainable and to create work and volunteer involvement opportunities for the Santa Cruz community through the new library.

“I am thrilled about this project and the opportunity to bring what we do at Reader To Reader to the schools in Costa Rica that need it most,” said Scudder. “Having spent significant time within a rural Costa Rican school community, I have seen the need and know the passion these kids have to learn is real. By equipping schools with the crucial tools they need in order to make their classrooms academically successful, we are making it possible for these schools to improve the quality of education they give to students, and help them enable students to strive for heights they never knew were reachable.”

Reader To Reader Launches Costa Rica Project

Reader To Reader is proud to announce the launching of Beyond el campo, a new books and computers donation initiative to build school libraries in rural Costa Rica.

With project Beyond el campo, Reader To Reader will work together with severely under-resourced high school students in rural Costa Rica in an effort to strengthen their educational resources and expand their academic community.

Project Beyond el campo will team with local community members to build a new school library, and provide librarian training to local community members by our Spanish-speaking certified library technician, in order to make the library sustainable and 100% community-run.

The second half of the project includes creating an on-line mentorship program between bi-lingual Amherst College reading mentors and the Costa Rican students. The online mentoring will not only bring students the supplementary support lacking in the classroom environment, but will introduce students to crucial technological skills, and through networking with successful U.S. students, inspire the students to bring innovation and entrepreneurship to their local and greater community and excel beyond “el campo” (Spanish for field or countryside).

The project will be headed by Caitlin Scudder, an Amherst College student and Reader To Reader’s new Assistant Director of International Programs.

Caitlin began her affiliation with Reader To Reader as a reading mentor in both the Navajo Mentoring Program and Doris Hiatt Mentoring Program. This summer she helped establish the Summer Enrichment Program, which works with low-income Native-American students in an intensive three-week program on the Amherst College campus.

"I am thrilled about this project and the opportunity to bring what we do at Reader To Reader to the schools in Costa Rica that need it most," Scudder says. "Having spent significant time within a rural Costa Rican school community, I have seen the need and know the passion these kids have to learn is real. By equipping schools with the crucial tools they need in order to make their classrooms academically successful, we are making it possible for these schools to improve the quality of education they give to students, and help them enable students to strive for heights they never knew were reachable."

Phase one of the project focuses on Santa Cruz de León Cortés, a small coffee-farming community with low academic achievement and a severely low percentage of students who continue on to higher education.

In the high school’s 2008 graduating class, only 50% of students graduated and received diplomas, and one student alone went on to pursue a university education.

The cycle of academic underachievement and general disinterest originates from a lack of adequate available resources that are crucial to inspire success.

Project Beyond el campo will impact the greater Santa Cruz community by providing the high school with the educational tools and training that will enable the community to be successful; and through connecting students with a support network of U.S. college mentors, will create a bond between the local Amherst College community and Santa Cruz.

For more information on Beyond el campo email: info@readertoreader.org

Reader To Reader Launches Summer Enrichment Program

This summer marks the debut of Reader To Reader's new Summer Enrichment Program. The program brings students from low-income communities who are entering their senior year in high school to Reader To Reader’s home on the campus of Amherst College for three weeks of academic enrichment.

The program focuses on enhancing academic skills through one-on-on work with college student reading mentors and specialized workshops with guest instructors. In addition to academic enrichment, the program also focuses on the college selection and application process, and strategies for a successful college experience.

“We are very excited to launch this new program which is an offshoot of our Navajo Mentoring Program,” says David Mazor, executive director of Reader To Reader. “We believe it will have a direct impact on students’ ability to get into and most importantly succeed in college.”

Learning the Sacred Way

Navajo Pine High School assistant librarian Samantha Begay gave an excellent presentation on the Kinaalda Ceremony. The four day ceremony celebrates a girl's passage into womanhood.

Amherst College juniors Kathryn Libby and Cait Scudder are spending the week with Reader To Reader executive director David Mazor working in schools on the Navajo Reservation.

Honoring Hard Work

Navajo Pine High School students participating in the online mentoring program were honored at an awards ceremony for their hard work during the 2008-2009 school year. Reader To Reader executive director David Mazor and reading mentors Cait Scudder and Kathryn Libby presented the awards during their visit to Navajo, New Mexico.

Among the honorees were Rodson Sandoval, who received a special plaque as the Top Mentoring Student for 2009 and an autographed NFL football.

Also pictured is Bettina Kinlichinie who received the award for Outstanding Achievement -- College Literature. Kinlichinie received a volleyball autographed by two time Olympic gold medalists Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh.

Other award winners included: Al Cody Yazzie Outstanding Achievement --Science, Vichelle Harvey Special Recognition-- Fiction, Gabrielle Nakai Special Recognition-- Fiction, Leticia Begay Special Recognition -- Native American Literature, Kimberly Thomas Special Recognition-- Young Adult Fiction, Murphy Yazzie Special Recognition-- Young Adult Fiction, and Jesse CauyAugust Special Recognition--Manga.

The award recipients received a host of prizes donated by the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, Team USA Volleyball, The Volleyball Hall of Fame, the Boston Red Sox and the WNBA Connecticut Sun.

Congratulations to all the award winners for all their hard work.

Visiting Navajo Pine High

Reading mentors Kathryn Libby and Cait Scudder travelled to Navajo Pine High School in Navajo, New Mexico to meet the students that have been participating in the online reading program.

The mentors met outstanding shop teacher Robert Carrick, who by himself teaches welding, auto repair, woodworking and CAD drawing.

Mr. Carrick has the great idea to have his students build wind turbines and solar panels so they can be skilled in green technologies.



Reader To Reader has been supplying his shop with books on solar technologies to help launch the project.

Amherst College juniors Kathryn Libby and Cait Scudder are spending the week working for Reader To Reader in schools on the Navajo Reservation.

Gathering Together

On the last evening of their visit to St. Michael Indian School in St. Michael, Arizona, Reader To Reader’s executive director David Mazor and reading mentors Kathryn Libby and Cait Scudder gathered with the students and their families for a celebratory dinner.

In addition to lots of great food the students prepared Navajo culture presentations on Navajo language, government and history.

The gathering was a special send-off for the mentors that will not be forgotten.


Reader to Reader Executive Director, David Mazor, and Amherst College juniors Kathryn Libby and Cait Scudder are spending the week working for Reader To Reader in schools on the Navajo Reservation.




Sad to say goodbye!

On Trial

The juniors of St. Michael Indian School staged a mock trial based on Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible with their visiting Amherst College reading mentors serving as the trial judges.

“The Amherst College student mentors really inspired our students to step up their game,” history teacher, Michelle Horrevorts, said.

St. Michael students engaged in extraordinary displays of extemporaneous speaking while serving as the prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Amherst College juniors Kathryn Libby and Cait Scudder are spending the week working for Reader To Reader in schools on the Navajo Reservation.

Enjoying Literature, Analyzing Text

Amherst College students Cait Scudder and Kathryn Libby lead a large group discussion with St. Michael Indian School's sophomores. The high level of their work drew raves from the students and their English teacher.

"As a teacher, observing these discussions is the reason I teach," St. Michael's English teacher, Joan Levitt, explains. "I see and hear students who are enjoying literature, analyzing text, and conversing with college students clearly and creatively. I love it."

The two Amherst College juniors are spending the week working for Reader To Reader in schools on the Navajo Reservation.

Ya'at' eeh Means Hello

Amherst College students Kathryn Libby and Cait Scudder stand with Irene Silentman, Navajo language teacher at St. Michael Indian School in St. Michael, Arizona. The two Amherst College juniors are spending the week working for Reader To Reader in schools on the Navajo Reservation.

The students attended Ms. Silentman's first year Navajo language class. They not only observed how the Navajo language is taught but also participated along with St. Michael's high school students.

During the class they learned that Navajo is a tonal language, with the vowels rising and falling. The meaning of words also changes with the pitch of the voice. The four separate tones of voice used are low, high, rising, and falling. They also learned about various verb conjugations.

To Ms. Silentman we gratefully say Ahe'hee (thank you).