Youth and College Ambassador Assault on Illiteracy

Bridge Builders Foundation, has partnered with Los Angeles Unified and Long Beach Unified School Districts to provide expanded educational support for targeted youth.

Through the Read Aloud Partnership (RAP), BBF hires college students (College Ambassadors) to work on elementary school campuses during school hours and read with youth in small groups to strengthen their language skills and build confidence.

During shared book reading, children learn to recognize letters, learn story structure, and experience increased phonological awareness and literacy conventions such as syntax and grammar. In addition, reading aloud increases vocabulary, teaches youth about peer relations and coping strategies, and builds selfesteem and general world knowledge.

This engagement is a supplement to the Youth Ambassador Program, where BBF employs high school students to provide classroom support, mentoring, and tutoring for students during Saturday school. The Youth Ambassador program provides our students leadership opportunities, employment experience, financial resources, and structured civic engagement. Many report this as their first source of employment.

This Ambassador program employs over 60 students from three partner schools (King-Drew and Fremont High School in LAUSD and Jordan High School in LBUSD). Currently, over ten elementary schools benefit from the support, and several hundred additional elementary school-aged youth are supported.

BBF is also committed to expanding our prescriptive programs by augmenting existing resources with dynamic support. Youth in under-resourced communities are disproportionately less likely to read or have access to books at home. The statistics and impacts of “book deserts” and the lack of in-home personal books in our communities prompted BBF to launch an Assault on Illiteracy. Last year, BBF gave out over 800 books to youth to take home. BBF plans to increase that number to 1,500 in 2023.