JULIA ROBERTS GOAD

Staff Writer

West Virginia First Lady and Southern West Virginia Community College President Joann Tomblin will be in Gilbert Monday to read to students as part of Energy Express.

Energy Express is an award-winning, 8-week, summer reading and nutrition program for children living in West Virginia’s rural and low-income communities.

Children living in rural and low-income communities often fall behind during the summer months, starting each school year behind where they were the previous spring.

Some of the factors that lead to this loss are the lack of school breakfast and lunch, and few structured learning opportunities for children living in rural and low income communities.

For those children, Energy Express can be the solution.

The program provides summer learning experiences focused on reading,serves two nutritious family-style meals each day and helps develop strong partnerships involving parents, schools, communities, and state agencies and organizations.

In addition to the learning activities, mentors eat nutritious, family-style meals with children, make family visits and complete a community service project.

The program runs for six weeks, with a different theme for each week’s activities.

Energy Express is a program under the leadership of WVU Extension Service’s 4-H Youth Development program. This AmeriCorps program is funded, in part, by grants from the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts and Volunteer West Virginia. The Mingo County program costs $575,000 to provide, yet comes at very little cost at the local level, as the majority of funding comes from federal and state government