With our city’s shrinking staff of educators and funding; and the number of schools that were already on the State of Alabama’s “Watch List”, extra help for struggling students is a must have for Huntsville City (AL) schools. Each year, in partnership with the Huntsville City School System, Madison County R.S.V.P. works to recruit and train volunteer tutors to assist students who need help with reading. Volunteers are matched with elementary students by teachers or school reading coaches. Volunteers read to, and listen to students read; helping to improve comprehension, test scores, and grade reading levels. During a school year, 22 R.S.V.P. volunteers tutored 62 students. These volunteers helped 95% of participating students improved in these areas by the end of the school year. In response to requests from our partner schools, we’ve begun to recruit Math Buddies this year. We’ve also grown to support 13 schools, and 1 afterschool program; and have just begun partnership with our first Middle School.

Since the closure of Hands On of Greater Huntsville, our county volunteer center; our city’s youth volunteers have been left without a resource for meaningful volunteer opportunities. Therefore, we are working to develop opportunities that will not only provide additional intergenerational exchanges and support education, but provide an opportunity for them to make an impact in the community as well. We will also act as the certifying organization through which these young volunteers can receive the President’s Service Award; a great, and much needed tool of encouragement and validation for the service they give to our community. In addition to the service awards, we also plan to serve as a resource for students who are required by their school to perform volunteer service prior to graduation; which leads to our next segment in intergenerational education: athletics.

Each summer, approximately 165 senior citizens from the North Alabama region come to the Huntsville~Madison County Senior Center, to compete in athletic events such as basketball, softball, horseshoes, frisbee toss, shuffleboard, and pickleball. Twenty-five teens were recruited to assist R.S.V.P. volunteer event monitors. The teenagers assisted monitors by handing out bottled water, measuring the distance for tossing/throwing competitions, retrieved balls, maintained equipment, etc. and cheered for the senior athletes. This was a very successful and valuable interaction for teens, and senior volunteers/athletes. Senior participants had a receptive audience to share their past and recent athletic achievements with; and the kids really enjoyed hearing about the accomplishments of senior athletes, and received encouragement and inspiration to reach their own goals. They were also quite amazed at how fun and active “old people” are! Both groups were extremely appreciative for the opportunity to work together, and are looking forward to the next competition!

Our next plan to support intergenerational education is to collaborate with our partner schools and libraries to develop a summer reading program that will involve an R.S.V.P. volunteer and youth volunteer partnership to assist struggling students in preventing the loss of reading progress made during the school year.