WBZ Cares: Volunteers Return Weekly To Help Students How To Read

BOSTON (CBS) - Each month, WBZ Cares highlights a worthy non-profit organization, and tells the story of what that organization does for the community.

This month's organization, Generations Incorporated, helps improve the literacy skills of kids from Kindergarten through 3rd grade by matching them up with older adult volunteers.

The Blackstone Innovation School in Boston's South End is among those where "Generations Incorporated" volunteers come every week to help students with their reading.

Bill Woolf has been going there for more than a decade.

"The kids really love to have other folks in their lives, who really care," he said.

The volunteers come from all walks of life. Wolff was in the life insurance and pension industry before he retired. Second-year volunteer Dennis Maguire is a lawyer, who also comes to Blackstone every week.

Second-year volunteer Dennis Maguire is a lawyer, who also comes to Blackstone every week.

"These young people are wonderful. It gives you a much more favorable view of the future. They're bright, they want to learn and we are doing our level best to help them," Maguire said.

Pat Patricelli was a sales promotion director. She's been a volunteer with "Generations Incorporated" for 10-years.

"My friends all say, at your age, you should just retire and put your feet up, but what is the good of that?" said Patricelli.

Danielle Morrissey, the principal of the Blackstone School, appreciates the work the "Generations Incorporated" volunteers do.

"Yeah, I have had several kids say, 'Oh I love my Generations volunteer' and say the volunteers' names. I've seen them holding their hands and giving them hugs when they see them."

The good the volunteers do is its own reward according to Woolf.

"When kids come back after they leave this school and go to middle school and they still come back to say 'hello' to a volunteer, it just warms their heart, it's fabulous," he said.

For more information about Generations Incorporated, visit www.generationsinc.org or the WBZ Cares section on the CBSBoston.com website during the month of February.