Goal is One Million Minutes of Reading by Students, Community Members "Books Give Your Brain a Boost" is the theme of AmeriCorps Week in Lake, La Porte, Starke, Marshall and Porter counties. From March 10 through March 18, community members were encouraged to read and log their minutes. The goal was too read one million minutes logged by students, their families, and other members of the community.

The theme underscores the AmeriCorps commitment to education and builds on previous reading-focused projects in the region, including the recent book drive, conducted by the members, that placed more than 3500 books in the hands of area elementary schoolchildren. AmeriCorps volunteers working in schools and not-for-profit organizations in these counties organized site-specific "Books Give Your Brain a Boost" events and celebrations. Many offered raffle prizes to participating readers. Names of readers were posted on a special "Reader Roll Call" displayed at AmeriCorps volunteer sites and local libraries.

"We hoped everyone would want to get involved," said AmeriCorps Week project coordinator Tony Douglass, who serves as a tutor and mentor at Memorial Elementary School in Valparaiso. "This is a project that emphasizes how important reading and learning are -- not just for young people, but for all of us at every stage of life." The members held a book drive and collected over 3500 elementary school age appropriate books for children and distributed them to schools participating in the local AmeirCorps program. The members partnered with the "Reading Buddies" program. Reading Buddies, part of the I Need a Hug program, is a literacy program that provides 2nd graders with a “buddy” that they read aloud to each day for 15 minutes. The children are tested at the beginning of the year, prior to introducing the “reading buddy” and then again, at the end of the year. The reading scores in participating schools have increased significantly with this program. Reading Buddies is currently being implemented in 26 schools.

There were 20 sites participating in the program and the effort expanded into 2 other states. The total number of minutes read was 639,987 minutes.