The Houston Dynamo and Dash professional soccer teams are official sponsors of HISD’s Read Houston Read volunteer program, and their most visible face is helping to recruit reader-mentors.

Brian Ching, longtime star with the Dynamo and the U.S. Men’s National Team and now managing director of the Dash women’s team, has recorded a public service announcement seeking volunteers for Read Houston Read.

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Ching spent a day with students at The Rusk School near BBVA Compass Stadium, where the Dynamo and Dash play, to read with them and record the message.

It aligns with the message of Major League Soccer’s “Active Bodies Active Minds” fitness, nutrition, and learning program — that active children are engaged students, and that reading fuels learning.

The PSA is being offered to local television stations for airing, to help HISD recruit 1,500 volunteers to share reading with first-graders at designated schools, where youngsters are unlikely to have an adult in their lives who can read to them.

Volunteers can donate a half-hour of their time weekly online or an hour in person, and are fully trained to read a book to the students, share a related activity, and listen to the child read. To learn more or to volunteer, visit Read Houston Read .

The program is one of the community components of HISD’s Literacy By 3 classroom initiative, which aims to have all students reading on grade level by the end of third grade.