Some students’ idea of community service is giving their little brother or sister a ride to school when the snow is really bad and the kid has a broken leg.
But for Brenna VanFrank and other participants of the Literacy Program, community service is not a once-in-a-while impulse of charity but an act of commitment and dedication.
VanFrank, the Bennion Community Service Center’s student director and Golden Key Honor Society’s graduate adviser, is the founder of the Literacy Program.
The goal of the program is to get homeless and underprivileged children excited about reading and learning so they can succeed in the future.
Volunteers meet through the Golden Key and the Bennion Center on Monday nights at the Road Home, a homeless shelter, to read to and to work with kids.
“[I hope to] instill a love of learning and reading in kids and get them excited about school,” VanFrank said.
Ben Yang, Golden Key Chapter president, explains VanFrank’s involvement.
“She wanted a consistent service project that would make an impact, something continuous,” Yang said. “She went up to the Road Home and asked what they were lacking in, and they wanted literacy help.”
VanFrank, with the help of her schoolteacher mother, put together the needed materials.
Through the Bennion Center, VanFrank developed her project and used it to acquire her status as a Service Learning Scholar.
The program receives partial funding from the Associated Students of the University of Utah and Golden Key.
On a typical night at the shelter, volunteers choose a theme, “like Goldilocks,” VanFrank says, and read books and do activities, such as puppetry, food projects and art related to it.
Recently, as a tribute to Halloween, the kids made spiders out of licorice and read spider-themed books. Although they are trying to get the kids to “start associating fun with learning and books, we try to slip math in there, too,” VanFrank said.
However, the program digs deeper than just teaching and playing with kids.
“The main goal, instead of teaching them, is to provide kids with a fun and stable environment,” Yang said.
VanFrank also said that the kids attending the program often come from broken homes and troubled families, and stay at the homeless shelter for around three months. “The program is consistent. The kids don’t have a lot of consistency and stability in their lives, but they know we’ll be there every Monday,” VanFrank said.
VanFrank and other participants strive to build relationships with the kids in the program.
VanFrank believes that it is important for these kids to build good relationships with adults.
“They don’t have such a great relationship with the adults in their lives. They are often rebellious against authority and [at first] against the program-it is a structured setting. We try to show that kid-adult relationships are a good thing. Kids bond with the volunteers and get a mentoring relationship,” VanFrank said.
The response to the program has been exceptional and the program has received multiple awards from Golden Key headquarters.
According to Melissa Petersen, the volunteer coordinator at the Road Home, it is one of the most popular programs at the shelter.
“The kids at the shelter love it. The volunteers are always there and always on time. They are very dedicated and the program is very successful,” says Petersen.
The best indication of the program’s success is the kids’ reaction, however.
According to VanFrank, many kids can be against the program at first because of its structured setting and might complain and rebel. But, at the end of the program, kids get excited about projects and ask to borrow books.
“The most exciting thing for me is when a 7-year-old asks to borrow a book to take with him and read when a week ago he was saying, ‘This is so boring,'” according to VanFrank.”It is amazing to see the change in them. Whatever we are doing, we’re doing something right.”
Those interested in volunteering for the Literacy Program should contact Yang and VanFrank at [email protected].
The program runs every Monday night from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and involves a short training session before participation.
