Help happiness: donate reading lessons

11-year-old Iris lives in Fiji. One day, she wants to work in law to save the oceans. For now, it’s Iris’s #HappinessIdea to learn to read.

Suva, FIJI — Iris is 11 years old. She lives in Fiji in the South Pacific with her parents and two older brothers. In their village about 45 minutes west of Suva, Iris’s mother is a housewife and a farmer. Her father is a builder. Iris’s happiness is spending time in the ocean. She spends her free time surfing and diving. One day, Iris told us, she’d like to be an environmental lawyer. Iris’s dream is to one day save the oceans.

In 2018, we met Iris through a friend of a friend. Gwen Isaac, a filmmaker friend of ours, was traveling in Fiji on a work assignment. Gwen met up with a friend of hers, Jodi, who happens to be Iris’s neighbor. As it happens, Iris’s parents have lent Jodi a hand now and again, and so Jodi has returned the favor by looking out for Iris. It was during one of Iris’s visits to see Jodi that Jodi discovered how far behind in reading Iris was. After performing an online assessment of Iris’s abilities, Jodi discovered that Iris was reading at a year 2 level. Iris is currently in year 6.

Of course, if Iris does want to pursue a professional path, particularly that of environmental law, she’ll be required to read at a much higher level. But because Iris is so far behind, she’s struggling to catch up with the other students in her class. Iris’s mom and dad have instilled in Iris a strong work ethic. It’s not for lack of effort that she’s fallen behind. Jodi has been trying to tutor Iris, but Jodi has a career of her own, and isn’t able to provide the support that Iris needs to make the big leap from struggling to read to comfortably reading.

Jodi and Iris have discussed Iris’s interest in saving the oceans. Ultimately, you could say it’s Iris’s long-term “Happiness Idea.” And Jodi and Iris have talked a lot about how much Iris loves to surf and dive. In a sense, the ocean is her home. With Iris’s future at stake, Jodi has come to us asking if there’s any way we might be able to crowdsource a reading tutor for Iris. We’d like to do one better. We’d like to crowdsource not one, but two tutors. And, we’d like ask one of you to donate an online professional reading program for Iris. The aim is to get her tutors to use the online tutorial, and Iris can work on her own when she’s not working with the tutors.

Iris’s #HappinessIdea is to learn to read! Can you help Iris? We are crowdsourcing for two reading tutors who will work with Iris online. And we’re crowdsourcing for a donation of a professional online reading program.