Reach Out and Read Oregon
Reach Out and Read Oregon
Reach Out and Read has been serving children and families in Oregon since 2012. By promoting reading aloud and positive, daily child-caregiver interactions, Reach Out and Read Oregon and its partner clinics are working to ensure that every child in Oregon has the foundation they need to succeed in life.
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Investing in Impact.
Reach Out and Read Oregon currently serves 26 counties across the state of Oregon with plans to expand our reach to every corner of the state, focusing on rural communities and clinics who provide services to families covered by Medicaid.
Our Program
Reach Out and Read Oregon gives young children a foundation for success by
incorporating books into pediatric care and encouraging families to read aloud together.
165,000
Well-child visits annually
Well-child visits annually
158
Program sites
Program sites
154,000
Books provided annually
Books provided annually
129,000 kids ages 0–5 live at or below 200% of the federal poverty threshold in Oregon.
Give the gift of reading aloud to a child in need.
Oregon Symphony Storytime
Reach Out and Read Oregon is thrilled to sponsor the Oregon Symphony’s second season of Symphony Storytime. The online 16-episode educational series features musicians accompanying the reading of beloved children’s books. The new season of Symphony Storytime will include 12 English and four Spanish language children’s books representing diverse stories and a variety of musical instruments.
The series will feature highly repeatable, popular children’s stories like The Snowy Day, Harlem’s Little Black Bird, Una Extraña Visita, and more. All 16 online episodes will be free for the public to enjoy and new episodes will be released each week on the Storytime website.
In these current, challenging times, Reach Out and Read Oregon is more important than ever. As this video explains, our program provides pediatricians and family doctors a valuable opportunity to address relational health, positive parenting and resilience during periods of calm as well as during ones of stress and instability. Handing out a book and observing how the parent and child interact with the book gives us a window into the relationship and environment at home. This can guide the provider in how to discuss and model positive parenting strategies, using the book as a tool for soothing and building language-rich interaction between caregiver and child.
Meet Our Staff
Samira Godil became Reach Out and Read Oregon’s Executive Director in January. She is passionate about leading the program that provides the Reach Out and Read model to 86,000 children and families statewide each year, in support of the health and well-being of Oregonians.
Samira has nearly 20 years of nonprofit management and fundraising experience. Prior to joining ROR Oregon, she advocated for the Portland metro area’s low-income and uninsured populations as Executive Director of South West Community Health Center, which she founded in 2002 to provide low-cost, exceptional healthcare to those unable to access medical coverage because of income, employment, or immigration status. She also serves on several local boards and has been instrumental in developing and implementing the City of Beaverton’s Diversity and Inclusion plan.
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Kristin fell in love with Oregon in 2006 and has been happy to call Portland home ever since. She received her Master of Public Health degree from Portland State University and completed her MPH field experience at Oregon Health Authority, focusing on adolescent health promotion. She then spent three years as the Program Manager for MIKE, a health education and youth development program for low-resource high school youth in the Portland Metro Area. For the following two years, she was the Project Manager for Oregon Pediatric Society, developing clinical trainings and leading quality improvement projects around pediatric mental health issues.
As the Program Specialist for Oregon, Kristin is passionate about ROR’s unique multipronged approach that addresses early literacy, relational health between caregiver and child, social-emotional learning, and mediation of toxic stress all in one. Kristin looks forward to continuing to work with existing program sites and supporting expansion efforts to bring this powerful intervention to more Oregon children.
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Christina was brought onto the ROR Oregon team in 2019 after spending nearly a decade working with Portland metro area organizations serving the area’s low-income, uninsured and homeless populations. Christina brings a passion for connecting individuals, foundations, corporations, and volunteers together in support of causes she loves. The positive and evidence-based developmental, social, and emotional outcomes that Reach Out and Read promotes are ones that especially excite and energize her. Christina looks forward to extending the reach of the program throughout the state through long-term partnerships and increased awareness of the life-changing power that a book and guidance from a trusted medical provider can have on a child.
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