Head Start Volunteers Solicit Assistance League Diablo Valley Readers

Prior to a recent Assistance League Diablo Valley monthly meeting, staff members from Community Services Bureau Jennifer Kirby and Jessica Black posed these questions to members in attendance: “What was your favorite book during your childhood years? Do you still love to read? Do you enjoy engaging with young children?”

The visiting staff members of Head Start, a federally funded program that supports children’s growth from birth to age 5, provided a compelling slide presentation to illustrate how engaging with young children by reading to them instills empathy, improves literary skills and performance in various subjects, enhances communication skills, exercises and expands the brain, creates an intrinsic thirst for knowledge, provides entertainment value and reduces stress.

Head Start also engages the families, as their involvement enhances overall wellbeing in the home front. Emotional as well as financial support are available. Likewise, program volunteers help enrich the program by exposing children to various learning experiences.

What began as a lone, eight-week summer program in 1965 has since progressed to a nation-wide year-round program that has supported over 40 million child recipients to date.

There are presently 12 Assistance League Diablo Valley volunteers who read in six classrooms at three different Head Start sites. Each week the students hear two books read to them; these books are left in the classrooms.

Ms. Kirby and MS. Black concluded their presentation with an appeal to those Assistance League Diablo Valley members who love to read to children by providing central and east county Head Start locations where they can continue that love.

To learn more about Assistance League Diablo Valley and its thrift shop in Lafayette that funds 15 hands-on programs, please visit: assistanceleague.org/diablo-valley.