Big Society questioned as charity fights for survival

Read It Together, formerly known as The Pooh Bear Reading Assistance Society, has been in Hull for 35 years and has given thousands of children one-to-one reading support. But it is now going into hibernation after funding was withdrawn.

All now depends on a bid for Lottery funding to cover running costs for the next three years.

Volunteer coordinator Helen West, who is in her 11th year with the charity, said: “We will be going to sleep during May.

“I personally feel we had the Big Society that David Cameron wants but we are killing it off. There’s been Home Start, which closed with 92 volunteers and we have 165 adult volunteers working in 60 schools in Hull. What will happen eventually as people move on, there will be nobody to replace them.”

As well as adult volunteers, there are 270 reading mentors in half the schools – older children who work with younger children.

Volunteer Jock Ogston who has helped children at two east Hull primary schools, Maybury and Mountbatten, for nine years, said: “It’s just a shame that these things come to an end due to the recession, but many of my colleagues will carry on in the schools because we are so attached to the school and kids.”

One of the children was a Romanian boy, who was “as bright as a button” and after a year was reading and writing English. Mr Ogston said: “I was so delighted and pleased I presented him with his own book and he was over the moon. You are a friend to the kids and you can bolster them up.”