York America�s Promise Breakfast Club for 2011-2012

Project Scope: The York America�s Promise Breakfast Club is a new partnership project between Rotary District #7390 and Junior Achievement in support of the School District of the City of York. The idea is to bring volunteers into the school during breakfast time to help a select group of students with their reading requirements and other skills.

Project Description: Adult volunteers from the community will come to their chosen school 1 morning a week for 5 consecutive weeks. Volunteers choose a day of the week from Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Each volunteer will work with a group of up to 6 students for approximately 30 minutes between 8:10 to 8:40 a.m. for 5 consecutive weeks (a total of 5 meetings). The volunteer will meet with the same students the same day of the week. Volunteers may also elect to participate more than 1 day a week.

Students in this program will be selected from grades Kindergarten through 4^th grade by school administrators and teachers. After the students have had their breakfast, each group of students will meet in a provided room with a volunteer on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for 5 consecutive weeks (a total of 15 meetings). Each student will receive a Breakfast Club card for attendance tracking with the club card kept in the students 100 Book Challenge folder. Volunteers will apply a sticker to each student�s club card after each meeting. Students having a minimum of 13 stickers at the end of the session will receive a Breakfast Club certificate of completion. 

During the visit to the Breakfast Club, the students will pair-off while the volunteer monitors their reading. The time frame will allow each student to read for 10 minutes each visit. Since students in the School District of the City of York are required to read 10 minutes a day, the Breakfast Club will help students meet this requirement and begin their day successfully having completed their reading obligation. Future program sessions may ask volunteers to help the students with math by using flash cards and improve spelling and language skills by playing a game. However for the first pilot year, the program will focus on helping with the reading challenge. 

Project Pilot: The program will be piloted for the balance of the school year in the School District of the City of York in 3 elementary schools (Ferguson, Goode and Jackson). There will be an orientation for all volunteers late-January 2012. The first Breakfast Club session will run from February 7 until March 8 and the second session from April 17 until May 17.

Project Goal: The program�s goal for the balance of the school year is to sign-up enough volunteers to have 3 groups of students at each of the 3 pilot schools. To cover this goal, we will need 27 volunteers each of the 2 sessions, or a total of 54 volunteers. These volunteers will work with a total of 54 students per session or a total of 108 students. For next year, we hope to obtain many more volunteers to open the program to all other elementary schools in the district.