Lucas* could have gone to play. There were toys within reach and nobody was making him do anything, and he picked up A is for Acorn instead. He read it through with Chad, his Friend (paid, professional mentor), and then wanted to recite every word he could remember out loud.

"Watching Lucas become confident, engaged, and excited about learning was truly a proud moment of what happens when a child begins to believe in themselves." Chad, Friend

September is National Literacy Month, and at our Clubhouse in downtown Stockton, that mostly looks like this. A child with a book they chose, and someone beside them who has the whole afternoon.

Having books our youth are excited to read goes a long way. This summer, a collection featuring Indigenous authors and stories arrived through Buffalo Circle, an initiative of Friends of the Children National that supports culturally grounded mentorship for Native children and tribal communities, built around kinship and community healing. Every child deserves to open a book and find someone like themselves inside it, and someone unlike themselves too. Every photo on this page is one of our kids holding one, and they have become favorites at our clubhouse!

Choosing the book is Vera's* part too. Every week she is the one who picks it, and Crystal, her Friend, reads whatever ends up in her hands. Over the past several months, that small ritual has grown into the steadiest part of their time together.

Vera's teacher had mentioned that twenty minutes of reading a day would help her, and Crystal decided that some of those minutes could belong to the two of them. So now they read out loud together, sounding out the words she does not know yet, stopping in the middle of a page to talk about what is happening in the story and what Vera thinks is coming next.

Plenty of the words are still hard, and Vera knows it. What has changed is what she does when she reaches one. She slows down and tries again, and on the days when frustration gets there first, she tries again after that too.

"When she comes across a difficult word, I encourage her to slow down, try again, and remember that it is okay not to know everything right away." Crystal, Friend

Patience and perseverance are not things you can hand a child. They get built one afternoon at a time, and Vera has been building hers all year. They show up in her classroom now, and at home. Somewhere in these months reading also quietly stopped being an assignment and turned into something she looks forward to.

None of that happened in one sitting. The twenty minutes were never the hard part. Coming back the next week, and the week after that, is what turned a teacher's suggestion into something Vera now does on her own. When a word is hard in October, Crystal is still there for it in March.

That is the whole design. Friends are paid, professional mentors, and each one spends three to four hours a week with each child, wherever that child happens to be: in the classroom, at our Clubhouse, at home, and out in the community across San Joaquin County. Crystal talks with Vera's teacher, so the work at school and the work in their sessions pull in the same direction.

It is also why June did not interrupt anything. School let out and the reading kept going, straight through the summer, so Vera did not spend September picking back up where she left off in the spring. She had never put it down.

"Sometimes success is helping a child believe that they are capable of taking the next step, and then continuing to walk beside them as they do." Crystal, Friend

This is what we call the Power of One:

One Friend who remembers which words were hard last week.

One child who tries the word again anyway.

One relationship that stays for 12+ years, no matter what.

We are a growing chapter, building something in San Joaquin County that is meant to last a child's entire school career. Some days that looks like a boy deciding a book is more interesting than the toys. Some days it looks like a girl trying a hard word one more time because she knows Crystal is not going anywhere.

Books like these come from people who are generous. The hours around them come from people like you. Crystal and Chad are paid, professional mentors, and they will still be showing up when Lucas and Vera are in high school. Thank you for making that a job somebody in Stockton gets to hold.

* Names changed to protect youth privacy.