Volunteer Spotlight: From Grants to Growth

Elena reading with a student

There’s many ways to get involved here at Hope Horizon East Palo Alto both working with kids and behind the scenes. Elena does both! 

Path to Hope Horizon

After accepting a postdoc position at Stanford, Elena began searching for volunteer opportunities with two criteria in mind. Since she already had experience working with kids as a gymnastics coach, she wanted to do something with education. She also wanted to use her academic grant-writing skills in a nonprofit context, to prepare for a career in the nonprofit space. Hope Horizon fit both of those requirements perfectly: Elena helps out with both writing grants and tutoring students in reading.

Her Work

In her behind-the-scenes work, Elena writes grant applications to secure funding for Hope Horizon. Although it’s not glamorous or high-visibility, securing grants plays a vital role: each grant benefits all of the students. She finds joy in making sure our programs are free to low cost for students, and grant writing is a key step in making that happen.

In contrast, her in-person volunteering is as personal as it gets. Elena sits with students one-on-one in a small room as they practice reading. Her kids are usually some of the youngest at Hope Horizon and struggling in reading at school. At first the process is slow: many students need to sound out every word when they start out. When they try to guess words instead of reading them, Elena steers them back to spell out each sound properly. When they’re discouraged or tired, she finds ways to motivate them. “If you can set up small games, you can see that they’re having fun and that they’ll actually do it,” she says.

Language Learning Connection

Elena’s mother tongue is Italian, so teaching kids how to read in English posed a unique challenge for her. But by watching podcasts and with the help of fellow volunteer Ms. Edith, she was able to ramp up quickly. And the learning, she says, was so interesting it was natural.

Elena’s background in Italian also allows for unique advantages. Many of her students come from Spanish-speaking households, and it’s easy for them to fall into pronunciations that make sense in Spanish but not in English. Since Spanish and Italian are similar languages, these pronunciations are intuitive to her as well--they’re the same instincts she had to stretch beyond when she was learning English.

Learning To Read

Over weeks and months of learning, the students begin to sound more natural. As they improve, they also become more and more enthusiastic about reading. That’s what’s most satisfying to Elena. “The great part of it is seeing their progress through time and how they can slowly get better at what they do,” she says.

Join us for Fall!