A crisis we saw up close, before we ever saw it in a headline
Read to Rise did not begin with a statistic. It began with watching siblings, cousins, and friends fall behind, not for lack of ability, but because no one had shown them that reading could belong to them too. Naufil Arshad and Ali Abdelfadiel founded Read to Rise in 2024, turning that personal frustration into an organization built to do something about it.
That struggle turned out to be far bigger than our own families. Across the country, reading levels and reading habits are slipping, and the students who fall behind early rarely catch up on their own. We founded Read to Rise to address that, starting in our own area and expanding one student and one classroom at a time, from pre-K through high school.
We are youth-led, which means we arrive as near-peers rather than distant experts: close enough in age to our students to earn their trust quickly, and serious enough about literacy to make that trust worthwhile. Since 2024, that approach has taken us into youth programs, schools, and community spaces across our area, and it continues to shape every session we run.
What we believe
Reading underlies every other subject a student will study, and every idea they will one day have the confidence to share.
We teach students to interpret texts, ask real questions, and build study habits that outlast any single school year.
