Marquette University alumnus and NBA legend Dwyane Wade has given a major gift to the university’s Ralph C. Hartman Literacy and Learning Center to extend his Live to Dream Summer Reading Program through 2025, according to the university.
His gift will continue to grow the highly successful summer reading program he initially funded through the Wade’s World Foundation in 2015. Wade said that he will rename the program after his sister, Tragil Wade-Johnson, who has been actively involved since they launched the effort in 2015 to curb the “summer slide” in reading achievement among inner-city Milwaukee school children. University leaders saw immediate educational gains in the participating students.
“Being able to work with kids and interact with them at an impressionable age is the best. To have the ability to help them in their educational and personal journeys is just incredible,” Wade said. “The community I come from, a lot of kids don’t have the resources or opportunities. For us to be able to provide some of those resources is something I thought about when I was a kid, having the ability to change my family’s fortunes. I was able to use basketball as a tool, but not everyone will have that chance. This program not only assists with the fundamentals of reading, but also provides the opportunity to interact with kids from other walks of life, develop communication skills and ultimately be exposed to experiences that they normally wouldn’t have encountered.”
Source: https://app.cerkl.com/org/story.php?id=15914882
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