Village School Elementary Readathon Raises $3,000 for Pratham

By Jawahar Malhotra

HOUSTON: Once again this year, the students at the Village Elementary School participated in the Pratham Readathon Challenge during the Spring semester. Many kids from kindergarten through the fourth grade competed in their grade levels to raise money for the Indian NGO Pratham which helps to educate kids in poor areas of India. This is the third year that the Village School kids have participated in a Readathon. In 2015 they raised $10,000, and last year at a similar event organized by Manjit Soni they raised $3,000. Many of their parents are committed Pratham supporters and have donated at the Gala earlier this year.

The premise of the Readathon is pretty simple: kids commit to read a number of books and find sponsors who commit some money, but the idea is to encourage and challenge kids to get in the habit of reading. “This helps to sharpen their skills and sparks the thought process,” said Manjit Soni. “It promotes imagination, builds vocabulary and spelling and gets the family together to discuss, spend quality time. It lays the platform for further interaction on various issues.” Soni couldn’t have been more pleased, since she is both a Pratham volunteer and a volunteer at the school who has helped with the Readathon challenge for these three years. 

The Pratham Readathon Committee of nine fourth graders and lead teacher Jessica Parker organized the event. The students also created a huge Readathon bulletin board that was up on the wall by the gym so all students could see the number of books read by each grade level as they were posted as the class that read the most books would be the winner. At one point the Kindergartners were winning but then the first graders got ahead and finally won by the end of April cutoff date by reading an astonishing over 1505 books!

Kelly Broaddus, the Director of the Elementary School, along with Jessica Parker, the fourth grade Language Arts teacher, and team leader Pat Spears worked hard at promoting the Readathon by making daily announcements, writing notes in the school newsletter and electronic messaging to parents. They had a goal of raising $5,000 but as many parents had already donated at the Pratham Gala, they raised $3,000 which will allow 120 disadvantaged kids in India to go to school for one whole year.

Teaching is close to Soni’s heart. She taught at SIES College in Mumbai, then was in the National Social Service before coming to the US. She taught social studies at Cy-Fair and Alief ISDs and has been a substitute teacher at the Village School since 2014, when she also became the National Readathon Coordinator for Pratham. “I’m sure the students at the Elementary School had fun reading,” said Soni at the medals awards ceremony held later. “It helped them further develop their reading skills and parents got an opportunity to engage and interact with their kids about the books they read. So it’s a win-win program.”

Pratham recognized the kids efforts with a ceremony held at the School on May 23 and 24 at which Pratham board member Prat Gupta presented the awards. The 104 first graders received certificates since they won the competition and the 4th grade Pratham Student Committee received medals. Jessica Parker won a trophy and Kelly Broaduss received a plaque. Gupta is a successful businessman who is the founder and owner of the multinational software company, The Bursys Group. Gupta and his wife Charu are committed Pratham supporters and have a daughter Vani at The Village School.

Manjit Soni contributed to this story