St. Cloud Mayor Kleis Honors Volunteers With Proclamation [AUDIO]

ST. CLOUD -- St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis proclaimed next week Celebrate Service Week in honor of those who volunteer throughout the community.

Kleis read his proclamation Tuesday morning at Madison Elementary school in front of a group of volunteers from AmeriCorps, Senior Corps Foster Grandparents and Senior Corps Retired and Senior Volunteer Program.

Kris Strobel is the AmeriCorps Program Manager. She say AmeriCorps volunteers help students develop their math and reading skills.

Full time Reading Corps tutors can help anywhere from 16 to 20 students at a time. The Minnesota Reading Corps conducted a study and found that after one semester of tutoring, the average kindergarten student performed twice as well as a student without an AmeriCoprs tutor.

Last year there were more than 30,000 students tutored by Reading Corps volunteers.

Kleis joked with the volunteers by saying, "one thing that's great about St. Cloud is the people. It's certainly not the weather."

The AmeriCoprs reading program was founded about 11 years ago. It was so successful that the organization added a math program six years later. Minnesota's chapter has become a model for states like Colorado and California.