This year's Read-and-Write-a-thon (RWAT) has been a spectacular success -- our most successful fundraising drive ever, in fact, and it isn't even over. About a week after we gathered in the Longfellow Middle School library to read to each other, solo and in groups, our total raised is approaching $37,000, and donations will continue to come in as we move into summer. See for yourself!
Countless people reached into their hearts and pocketbooks to make this possible
-- our coaches and other valued associates, and the friends, family members, and co-workers they in turn reached out to. What all this has meant is the continuation of writer coaches sitting next to students in classrooms. Funding is what makes it possible for our coaches to do this. For everything and anything you did to support RWAT this year, we are deeply grateful!
Here are the stalwart individual readers, in order, who began our literary conga-line at 8:00 a.m. and finished it at 6:00 p.m. on May 18: Kathleen Hallam, Erica Siskind, Jim Delaney, Michael Dickens, Karen Larson, Denis Clifford, Bill Schechner, Ruth Minka, Anita Goldstein, Cynthia Barnes-Slater, Susan Brooks, Jeanine Brown, Paul Epstein, Maureen Dixon, Kent Wright, Margy Wilkinson, Tina Boyer, Libby Vega, Chris Keeler, Ryan Bell, Lisa Awrey, Richard Goodman, Katie Koelle, Jeff Wyneken, Daniel Bort, and Lynn Mueller. And that's not even mentioning those others who joined us for a reading of The Laramie Project and the twelve Longfellow students who came with their teacher, Martha Cain, and read their identity poems.
The Read-and-Write-a-thon is the biggest single regular funding source in our budget -- bigger than any single grant or any school or school-district payment. It's vital to the success of our program, and we are awed by the generosity of those who make it happen.
Bob Menzimer