A Special Day of Service

On an important day for our nation that has since become an occasion for remembrance and service to our community, members of United Way’s Women’s Leadership Council (WLC) spent their morning on September 11, 2014 reading with children in 5 Boston neighborhoods, joined by 10 female Boston Police officers as special guest readers.

The inaugural WLC Read to Succeed Day brought together more than 50 women (and a few good men),  including volunteer teams from Brown Brothers Harriman, Sun Life Financial, P&G Gillette, John Hancock and Alex & Ani, who all enjoyed sharing their time with local children in Allston, Dorchester, East Boston, Roxbury, and the South End.

See more photos in the Facebook album

The WLC spent this summer collecting 1,500 books in Vietnamese, Spanish, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Portuguese and Brazil Portuguese to encourage reading among local families, as studies show that reading in any language is highly beneficial to building a child’s literacy skills and that providing books in their native language can help better engage parents and families in reading.

Thank you again for bringing such a wonderful group of volunteers, I know our kids had a fun time reading with them! Thank you also for the book donation, which is being split between each of our preschool classrooms and shared in our agency’s lending library to encourage literacy at home with our Ellis families as well

– Lucy Davidson Executive Manager, Ellis Memorial

The books were distributed to community agencies on September 11 as part of the WLC Day of Service.

Learn more about the Women’s Leadership Council and opportunities to get involved, including the upcoming 19th Annual WLC Breakfast on October 9th.