Companies for Causes Delivers on First Promise of Support for Literacy Program at Washington, D.C.’s Eastern Senior High School
Students at Washington’s newly-renovated Eastern Senior High School received an early Christmas gift on November 28th with the delivery of almost 1,000 new books for their individual classroom libraries. Before year end, they will receive a second installment of books as well as custom bookshelves for their classrooms. The gift from Companies for Causes was the first step in an effort led by some of the community’s CEOs to help boost students’ literacy skills and turn around Washington’s lagging high school graduation rates.
Eastern’s students are using the books this week as part of the new the Drop Everything and Read Program (DEAR) program whose goal is to help all students improve their literacy skills and advance by two reading levels by end of the school year.
CEOs Tom Raffa of RAFFA, P.C.; Josh Carin of Geppetto Catering and Ed Woods of TerpSys delivered the books and met with a group of students to discuss the next steps in their partnership.
Companies for Causes decided to tackle high school graduation rates in D.C. as their first philanthropic effort together. To help lead the efforts, they convened a meeting of civic leaders, nonprofits, parents, school representatives and media last June to get recommendations on schools in need.
D.C. Councilmember Tom Wells was among those leaders. He suggested Companies for Causes contact Principal Skerritt and her students at Eastern Senior High School because they had a beautiful new media center but no books, librarian or classroom libraries.
Eastern Principal Rachel Skerritt has become a key partner for Companies for Causes. With her direction, a "wish list" of books was shared among the participating CEOs. A nonprofit partner serving the D.C. community, Turning the Page, collaborated with Companies for Causes in getting preferred pricing from the publishers for the books, and an online "gift registry" was established to enable additional donations to the school. OPX, a founding Companies for Causes member, secured the custom bookshelf donation from Steelcase.
Read more:
Share this with a Friend
Our expanded website will be coming soon. In the meantime, please share this with a friend!
