Read 2 Succeed Connects Buncombe Families to Community-Powered Literacy Support

Read 2 Succeed Asheville/Buncombe is building literacy support from the ground up, leaning on community partnerships to reach families across Buncombe County. Ashley Allen, co-executive director of the local nonprofit, sat down with Mountain Xpress earlier this week to explain how that work actually takes shape.

Allen's Q&A appeared March 11 in Mountain Xpress's Kids Issue series, a recurring feature the paper dedicates to young people and the organizations serving them in the Asheville area. The format, a "Kid Connection" interview, gave Allen space to speak directly about Read 2 Succeed's approach and what drives the organization's mission.

Read 2 Succeed Asheville/Buncombe, known locally as R2S, focuses on early and ongoing literacy support for children and families in the county. The nonprofit's model centers on mobilizing community volunteers and partners rather than relying solely on institutional resources, a distinction Allen highlighted in the conversation with Mountain Xpress.

The Kids Issue platform gave R2S visibility at a moment when literacy remains a pressing concern in Western North Carolina. Schools, libraries, and community organizations across Buncombe County have increasingly looked to collaborative models to address reading gaps that widened in the years following the pandemic, making R2S's community-powered framework especially relevant to local conversations about how children learn and who shows up to help them do it.