Our story
Coram Beanstalk was founded by our President Susan Belgrave in 1973.
Susan saw a volunteering scheme in action in a Harlem school in New York. Impressed by the results she decided to set up a similar scheme in North Kensington, in London.
Since then, Coram Beanstalk has gone from strength-to-strength. We have grown from a handful of volunteers to a network of trained reading helpers supporting about 10,000 children across England. Since we were founded, we have helped over 200,000 children learn to read.
How we help children unlock the power of reading
Through our programme, we help children aged three to 13 who have fallen behind with their reading, lack confidence, or struggle with fluency, comprehension, or vocabulary. We train volunteers from the local community and older students to become reading helpers. Each reading helper works with about three children, supporting them every week for the full school year. Together, they read, play and talk.
How our reading helpers change lives
Coram Beanstalk’s one-to-one reading support changes children’s lives by improving their reading skills, inspiring confidence in their own ability and increasing their enjoyment of reading.
-98% of our schools agreed that our reading volunteers helped children to improve their enjoyment of reading
-99% of schools agreed that our reading volunteers helped children to improve their confidence
-97% of schools agreed that our reading volunteers helped children to improve their attitude to learningHow you can support Coram Beanstalk:
We need your support to help children read, grow and thrive! There are so many different ways that you can support Coram Beanstalk and change lives. You can:
- Shop for good. Check out a range of ways to shop whilst helping us raise valuable funds, at no extra cost to you. For example, if you (or your parents!) buy books from our page on Bookshop.org , Bookshop.org will donate 10% of the cost of the book to us!
- Raise money for Coram Beanstalk. £25 could provide a child with 5 life changing 1-1 reading sessions, £50 could buy 10 brilliant books that can be used by our volunteers to help children engage and improve their reading, and £100 could provide a training session to 12 volunteer reading helpers.
- Ask your school to enquire about becoming a Coram Beanstalk partner school. In the first instance, all they’ll need to do is fill in this form. Becoming a partner school would mean that we send volunteers in to your school to help you and/or your classmates with their reading.
