Reading, PA
A national news story once named Reading the nation’s poorest community. It’s a story that has stuck to the community as if Reading will never thrive again. But what if that old news no longer fits? What if Reading already is more than it once was?
Since that news story, Reading has changed dramatically. No longer an industrial town with a predominantly White population, it is now almost 70% Hispanic. Neighborhoods are multilingual, the population is more transient, and the city is growing and revitalizing in all sorts of ways. Yet real divides hold the community back—between public institutions and civic groups, between neighborhoods with varying economic health, and among people in how they work together.
The challenge in Reading is to create a greater sense of shared purpose so that every young person and family has equitable access to education and can participate in the American dream.
In 2021 Centro Hispano partnered with The Harwood Institute with the support of the Walton Family Foundation to develop a community-led, community driven education agenda, which was presented in the report, Reading Thriving, Together.
After the report’s release, four local organizations—Centro Hispano, United Way of Berks County, The Wyomissing Foundation, and Berks Alliance—stepped forward to fund and lead the next phase of the work. The action phase launched in 2022 with a Getting Started Public Innovators Lab. During the Lab, three action teams formed to focus on education agenda items that were ripe for new action—English as a Second Language, After- and Out-of-School Activities, and Early Childhood Education.
In just a few years, each team has unleashed a chain reaction of actions that is both creating change on education issues that matter to people and strengthening the community’s civic. The initiative has grown beyond the three teams, extending to areas like youth violence prevention, the arts, and workforce development. While formal Harwood coaching has concluded, the work continues to grow, spread, and take root throughout the community.
Watch our video that demonstrates how the work in Reading has unfolded and spread, and how the community serves as an example of the change we need in this country.
At a time when so many community initiatives seem to stall out or fade away, Reading is creating real systemic change by taking a different approach.
Reading’s Ripples of Change is a progress report and a roadmap for growing and accelerating change over time.