Girl Scout Mariana Gillen stands with Columbia Restaurant Group President Richard Gonzmart and her M.A.R.I. kits for dyslexic students. Gonzmart, who overcame dyslexia as Gillen is doing, helped fund the project. Photos from United Way Suncoast
Mariana Gillen knows what it is like to try to focus on reading when others in the classroom are chatting. “You start picking up what they’re saying and putting it in the book you’re reading.”
Fourteen and dyslexic, this Girl Scout remembers the struggles she had beginning in first grade with learning to read. The distractions made it difficult.
“I made these kits for kindergarten through third graders who are really trying to find themselves and learn to read,” she said. “It’s hard to learn. You just need the tools.”
Gillen included those tools in her M.A.R.I. kits – that’s Making Awesome Reading Improvement – and turned them over to United Way Suncoast for distribution.
The kits include I Heart Myself phones that allow dyslexic students to whisper into them “so they can tell where they messed up.” Among other items, there are soundproof headphones that block out the chatter and highlighter strips that help students stay on the correct line while reading.
“I wasn’t able to see the children who got the kits, but I hope I can get pictures,” she said.
Gillen was joined this week in handing over the kits by Richard Gonzmart, president of The Columbia Restaurant Group, who also overcame dyslexia to become a successful businessman.
Assisting her to complete this project for her Girl Scout Silver Award, in addition to Gonzmart, were TLC Pediatric Dentistry, Hands Across the Bay and Rice Psychology Group.
Each kit also contains the book The Alphabet War, about a dyslexic kid who turns the malady into his superpower. “He learns differently,” she said.
