White Rock Elementary students, parents and teachers take two things very seriously: Reading and helping others.

A few years ago, the school combined the two with Read for Need, an annual spring fundraiser. Students line up pledges from family members and friends for every book or chapter they read over the course of a month. All the money raised is given to Socorro Elementary in Juarez, , White Rock Elementary’s sister school.

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The first year, students raised $10,000 and paid for a new playground at the school. The next two years, they raised $15,000 each year, paying for uniforms, school supplies, books and scholarships to junior high because many of the families can’t afford to educate their children past grade school.

“I was brought to tears,” says Brent Barry, the White Rock father who created the program. “Just because I know the plight. $10,000 to us is a lot. It’s like $100,000 to them. I was also taken aback by the kids who got it. You don’t get that from 9-year-olds very often.”

Barry is a Presbyterian minister and has taken several mission trips to the Mexican town. He’s always struck by the need, and vividly remembers his first visit.

“We were going to deliver some basic needs — mittens, cold medicine,” Barry says. “We traveled down this gravely, dirty dusty road. There were 100 kids, and they were meeting in the back of a broken-down school bus. All these kids were waiting in line for these items like it was Disney World.”

Barry created a slide show to kick off each Read for Need campaign, so that each year, White Rock students can see the community they are helping. Then for a month, parents encourage their children to read. At the end, the school holds an assembly with a mariachi band, and Socorro’s principal comes to collect the money.

“I expected a couple of thousand dollars,” Barry says of the first fundraiser. “They don’t know these kids. They’ve only seen pictures. But they had compassion.”

The program also benefits the students at White Rock Elementary, says Tina Hageman, chair of the school’s PTA Multi-Cultural Committee.

“Mostly, when my son was in kindergarten and Read for Need started, he got it,” Hageman says. “He really understood it. It got him engaged in reading … knowing he was doing it for someone else made a tremendous difference for him.

“It’s great for our kids at White Rock. It’s not just selling wrapping paper. It’s something educational for them, and it’s philanthropic. It allows them to do something for someone else.”

This year’s Read for Need program will take place during April. For information, contact Hageman at tohageman@yahoo.com.