Name: Bark 'N Ball 2025
Start: 2025-05-09T18:30:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-09T21:30:00-05:00
Location: Salvage One

Join over 200 dog and book lovers with a passion for children's literacy for an evening of food, fun, and philanthropy. Guests (both human and dog) will enjoy music, socializing, fundraising games, a silent and live auction, dinner, creative cocktails, and an exclusive doggy buffet for our special four-legged guests.
SitStayRead advances children's literacy and builds confidence in young readers by using an engaging curriculum incorporating social-emotional learning, enriched by certified reading assistance dogs.
SitStayRead serves Chicago schools and community-based organizations where the student population is 90% low-income and 60% or more third graders are reading below the national average.
The Chicago Public Schools 2023 state report card reported that only 12.2% of low-income 3rd graders were reading at grade level. While there was some improvement in 2024, gaps remain high in the neighborhoods SitStayRead serves. Our K-2nd grade evidence-based literacy enrichment programs and family literacy events provide extra attention, a range of approaches, and joy that ignite curiosity, motivation, and confidence in our young students.
Most recently we have focused on the following neighborhoods, in Chicago Public Schools, charter schools, parochial schools, community programs: Archer Heights, Auburn Gresham, Belmont Central, Gage Park, Galewood, Little Village, Pilsen, and Austin on Chicago’s South and West sides in neighborhoods with significant and persistent literacy gaps and in some cases high percentages of English Language Learners, particularly since 2023.
We prioritize CPS when possible, and offer fee-based Family Literacy Events to a wider range of Chicago organizations, including a major new partnership with the Chicago Public Library as part of its new Jump Into Reading initiative and collections to support emergent readers with decodable chapter books and other resources.
Help us continue this programming and support our work by joining us at SitStayRead's annual fundraiser, Bark 'N Ball 2025!