BookBuddiesOnline receives JCRC Human Needs Award

By Betty Schwartz, member, Human Needs Award Committee

The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of the Jewish Federation of Greater Naples (JFGN) engages in many activities to fulfill its mission of fostering and increasing good will and friendship between the Jewish community and the community of Greater Naples. The selection and presentation of the Human Needs Award to deserving organizations is one of the most gratifying of all its activities.

Our community has many nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping people with needs that would otherwise go unmet. The Human Needs Award Committee, chaired by Judi Palay, has the difficult task of selecting two worthy agencies to receive recognition and cash awards. Together we are making the world better — tikkun olam.

This year, the committee has chosen BookBuddiesOnline (BBOL) as one of the award recipients. A literacy project of Emerson Academy @ UUCGN (Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples), BBOL is a summer program aimed at giving the top academic-achieving high school students from economically challenged minority ethnic populations a head start in preparing for college. Emerson Academy was started as a collaborative effort of the Collier County Branch of the NAACP and UUCGN.

The mission of BBOL is to keep elementary school children reading at or above grade level with the hope of instilling a love of reading at an early age. Each grade school student, with the support and participation of parents, is paired with a high school volunteer tutor, who will earn community service hours for tutoring in the program. The student and tutor use a Webex or Zoom meeting platform, ideally for two 30-minute sessions a week. Each reading session is recorded, allowing teachers to later assess the quality of the learning process and measure the child’s reading proficiency and comprehension.

As much as possible, grade school students are matched with tutors with the same ethnic and language backgrounds. It is hoped that BBOL tutors will become strong academic role-model buddies for the students. The format of the tutoring sessions is designed to be fun instead of another version of school.

The BBOL program enjoys the enthusiastic support of the administration and faculty of Shadowlawn Elementary School as well as educational reading specialists throughout the Collier County Public School system. Plans in early 2021 include expanding the program into Lee County Public Schools with FGCU college students joining the team of BBOL tutors.

The BBOL website, www.uunaples. org/BookBuddiesOnline, provides additional information. On the site, you may also meet Lindsey Abellard and Brittany Nguyen, the Emerson Academy students who conceived the original library-based Book Buddies project.

The Human Needs Award Committee is honored to support this program.