VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES WITH EMPOWERING CHILDREN BAY AREA
Empowering Children Bay Area (ECBA) is a Sequoia Living program that pairs volunteer tutors aged 50 and older with children in 1st to 3rd grades to improve reading skills. Launched in 2007, ECBA currently serves 16 schools across Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Sonoma counties, fostering literacy and confidence in young learners. The program has been recognized as a Program of Merit by Generations United for its meaningful intergenerational impact. ECBA helps older adults contribute their wisdom while addressing a key factor in academic success for children.
How can you make a difference in a child's life by becoming an ECBA volunteer?
ECBA matches volunteer tutors aged 50 and older with children in 1st to 3rd grades who need extra help in reading. The program launched in 2007 in a single school. Today, ECBA serves 16 schools and is transforming the lives of thousands of students throughout Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Sonoma counties.
What is the intergenerational impact of the ECBA program?
Empowering Children Bay Area (ECBA) has been recognized as a Program of Merit by Generations United, honoring its meaningful intergenerational impact.
Through ECBA, volunteer tutors age 50 and older are paired with young readers in 1st–3rd grade, building literacy skills, confidence, and trust at a critical stage in a child’s development. This recognition highlights the program’s effectiveness in strengthening intergenerational connections while supporting early literacy, a key factor in long-term academic success.
VOLUNTEER TO BECOME A READING TUTOR
ECBA matches volunteer tutors ages 50 years and older with non-fluent readers in grades 1-3. By pairing young learners with experienced readers, we help to build confidence and trust at a critical time for children.
ECBA helps older adult volunteers put their wisdom to work, while, at the same time, addressing a major contributor to poverty: the inability of children to read at grade level by the end of third grade.
There is no experience necessary to become an ECBA tutor. We provide volunteer training and continuing support. Our volunteer community comes from all over the Bay Area and beyond; most are ages 65-85 years old and have a variety of work backgrounds. We do not require ECBA volunteers to be residents of, or otherwise affiliated with, Sequoia Living.
Launched in a single school in 2007, ECBA now serves thousands of students throughout Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Sonoma counties.
HOW WE MEASURE PROGRESS
Results from multiple independent evaluations prove that ECBA leads to significant reading gains for students who have struggled. Thanks to our volunteers who use this opportunity to rediscover purpose in their lives, the children in our program become great readers giving them an advantage to escape the cycle of poverty.
ECBA conducts an annual and ongoing data collection and reporting to measure student progress. Standardized assessments are used to determine a student’s reading proficiency upon entry into the program, and are administered multiple times per year, with at least one mid-point and final assessment. A ECBA staff person is designated to collect and analyze the standardized assessment data.
How can you make a difference in a child's life with ECBA?
STUDENT ELIGIBILITY
Students in our program are often a half to a full year and a half behind in reading; however, we like to work with our schools to decide which students will benefit the most. If you are with a school in the Bay Area and want to find out how to bring ECBA to your students, email Paul Chilvers at pchilvers@sequoialiving.org or call 415-912-6025.
Thank You!
THE FACTS
Children who are not able to read at grade level by fourth grade are four times more likely not to graduate from high school.
The median annual income for a high school dropout in 2015 was $25,000, compared with $53,800 for someone who obtained a college or post-graduate degree.
High school dropouts are more likely than those who graduate to be arrested or have a child while still a teenager.
