As a kindergartner,
Gabriela started school with a bounce in her step and a heart full of hope! She couldn't wait to
learn how to READ the books that she loved.
However, like up to 1 in 5 children in the United States, reading didn't come easily. It seemed a strange magic gifted to other kids, but always out of her reach no matter how hard she tried. Gabriela was diagnosed with severe dyslexia.
School became torture for her, and her parents did what so many before them have done ...looked for help. She began
reading intervention at school, but she needed something to help her access information at grade level.
"That's when we found Learning Ally," says her Mom, Darcy. "The human-narrated audiobooks changed her life and she can't stop reading. She finishes a whole book in a day now!"
Her current favorite is Robert Beatty's
Serafina series, which is a New York Times Bestselling hit. Beatty has first-hand knowledge of the same types of struggles in Gabriela's home - his daughter has dyslexia and he wrote the middle-grade novels with the thought in mind that they should be read aloud.
Gabriela also joined Learning Ally's youth organization, the
YES! Program, which pairs younger dyslexic students with older students as buddies to help them learn how to become strong self-advocates.
Now age 11, Gabriela feels so strongly about the benefits of
Learning Ally that she wants every child with a reading disability to find hope like she did. She spent her whole summer raising
$2,300 to donate to the non-profit, all part of an impactful organization called
Our Children Making Change. Gabriela will present this donation (in the form of a giant check) to Learning Ally officers during a youth event on Saturday.
Match Her Donation
As a national not-for-profit,
Learning Ally provides over 82,000 human-narrated
audiobooks to dyslexic, blind or visually impaired students or adults. The organization also maintains monthly
webinars for parents, teachers and students, live in person events, a pre-teen and teen student-to-student
dyslexia buddy program, and a
college mentorship program for blind/visually impaired students. The not-for-profit never turns anyone away for
financial reasons.
If you would like to help match Gabriela's donation, give today at this link: SupportUs.LearningAlly.org/Fundraise
