KPMG Book Fair

KPMG Book Fair
By Jenna Watanabe, Marketing & Development Coordinator

Summertime in San Francisco means a lot of things — BBQs, exploring the outdoors, and (hopefully) more sunshine. But what most people don’t know is that summertime can also mean a sharp decline in reading progress for some students.

It’s called “summer reading loss”, a term that refers to the decline in children’s reading development when children are away from the classroom and not participating in formal literacy programs (Allington & McGill-Franzen, 2003). It is one of many factors contributing to the achievement gap between high-socioeconomic and low-socioeconomic students–which is precisely why R.O.C.K. is so focused on literacy in the summer.

Just before the kids broke out into their summer programs, KPMG serendipitously offered to give our kids their very own tools for success.
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A group of corporate volunteers from KPMG’s APIN (Asian Pacific Islander Network) and KFFL (KPMG’s Family for Literacy) organized a book fair at our elementary school, bringing dozens of books from the KPMG Empower Collection that each celebrate the firm’s core values, including inclusion and diversity, citizenship, environmental sustainability, ethics and financial literacy.

On KPMG’s Day of Giving, APIN volunteers arrived at the school to read the featured book called “The Empty Pot”, a Chinese folktale about a little boy who learns the value of honesty. Our curious students circled with KPMG volunteers to read this tale together, and then each student was given their own copy, plus the opportunity to select a handful of more books to take home–and our kids were thrilled to pick out their very own book collection!KPMG2

Jason, one of KPMG’s volunteers praised the experience, saying, “R.O.C.K. was not only a great experience for the children, but a great experience for us KPMG professionals! It’s not every day that we get to make a difference in our local community, but R.O.C.K. gave us this opportunity and I am grateful for the time we got to spend reading and delivering books. Hopefully we get to do it again soon!”

Now our young R.O.C.K. participants have access to brand new, shiny books to read over the summer, improving their reading skills rather than losing them.

Special thanks to KPMG, KFFL and especially the APIN team for volunteering their time to read with our kids and donate books to our school.

Want to set up your own corporate volunteer event? Email jenna@rocksf.org to hear about our custom packages.

Read more about the impact of summer reading loss in this study.