Read Easy Plymouth - helping local adults to learn to read

We have vacancies on our enthusiastic, committed management team for other like-minded volunteers who have some time to spare and who can appreciate the importance of Read Easy's work in the local community. Might that be you? Team members work from home, though we hold regular meetings (about 6 times per year) to report on progress. The amount of time commitment needed depends on the team role, and will be more in this first year, as we get up and running.

We are also looking for suitable venues for our coach and reader sessions, as well as for our team meetings and other profile-raising functions.

We select reading venues that are as convenient as possible for both reader and coach and we're currently gratefully and happily using Devonport and Central libraries, Shekinah in Stonehouse Street, and the Cumberland Centre. It's important that the coaching session can be relaxed, so that both coach and reader can work without being overlooked, but with the security of having other people around - 'a private space in a public space'.

The need for Read Easy

There are many reasons why people may not have learnt to read as children. Read Easy reading coaches minimise the possible stress and embarrassment involved in learning to read as an adult by providing confidential, one-to-one tuition at flexible times and in discreet and convenient places.

Read Easy's gentle, free, volunteer-led one-to-one approach allows people to learn in privacy, at their own pace, and with the understanding support of their own dedicated reading coach.

The difference Read Easy makes is genuinely "life-changing"; it's a phrase that new Readers use over and over again. It helps them in so many ways:

• getting jobs or promotion, or attending training courses
• becoming independent shoppers - of medicines, food and clothing - life's essentials
• voting in general and local elections for the first time in their lives
• reading books, newspapers and accessing the Internet /social media - completing online forms too.
• campaigning with confidence for change in their local communities
• having the confidence to go to the doctors or opticians for a check up
• increased confidence and self-esteem, and improved mental health
• supporting their children and grandchildren with reading and homework

Can you help?

Read Easy is tremendously cost effective: as little as £3,000 p.a. will fund a Read Easy group. The administration and one-to-one coaching is all done by volunteers. So when we ask for support from local businesses, we're not asking for a lot. And we'd be as happy to accept the offer of a free meeting room for regular team meetings, or a quiet space for a coach and reader pair to meet twice a week, as we would financial donations.

If you are a local business and would like to support Read Easy Plymouth in any way, please do get in touch! This is a truly great initiative, changing the lives of people living and working in the local community. What could be more worthwhile?