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About us

Our vision, aims and values

Our vision is a nation of confident children literate for life. We believe that every child deserves the opportunity to develop to their full potential and literacy is essential to achieving this in both education and in life.

Strategic Aims

Our strategic direction is determined by the following five aims:

  • We will ensure the children we support receive the highest quality service delivering tangible outcomes for their literacy and confidence level.
  • We will extend our reach to more children in more schools across the country.
  • We will place our people at the heart of all we do and develop the organisation to reflect this.
  • We will ensure we are best placed to recognize and respond to the changing needs of our schools and the children we support.
  • We will ensure future generations of children continue to receive our help by creating sustainability through effective use of our resources and maximised income.

Corporate values

Our values inform everything we do. They are what we commit to as individuals and as an organisation. Our mission is ‘what we do’; our values are ‘how we do it’.

  • Integrity– we conduct ourselves with fairness, respect and honesty.
  • Accountability– we are accountable to funders, the children with whom we work, schools and reading helpers. We will be transparent in all of our activities.
  • Team culture– we are one organisation spread over many different locations. We are interdependent. We will collaborate and support each other to achieve excellent team and individual performance.
  • Creativity– we will be open to new ideas and change. We will look for innovative solutions to challenges.
  • Respect– we will treat each other, our volunteers, the children and those with whom we work in partnership with the utmost respect. We will challenge negative behaviours.
  • Flexibility– we will work flexibly and we will strive to maintain flexible employment practices.
  • Inclusivity– we are an inclusive organisation that works collaboratively and invites views and feedback from staff, reading helpers and beneficiaries.

What we do

Volunteer Reading Help recruits, trains and supports volunteers to work in primary schools with children who have fallen behind with their reading.

VRH reading helpers work with children on a one-to-one basis giving them their full attention and support to:

  • Increase overall confidence
  • Improve reading levels
  • Inspire a lifelong love of reading

Each volunteer works with three children and sees each child for two 30 minute sessions a week.

There are many reasons why a child may fall behind with their reading. They may lack support at home, they may not have English as a first language, they may simply have poor eyesight. VRH reading helpers are trained to recognise what challenges these children face and work through them. With access to a library of books and games at their local branch they can tailor their sessions to best support the children they work with.