Chapter One

Who we are

Chapter One is a growing charity dedicated to ensuring every child has access to one-to-one reading support at the time they need it most. We want a world in which all children have the literacy skills they need to thrive.

We support children at every stage of their primary reading journey through three programmes - Early Literacy Intervention, Online Reading Volunteers, and Book Clubs - helping them build both the will and the skill to read.

Our flagship Online Reading Volunteers Programme pairs five to eight-year-old children facing disadvantage with reading support volunteers from over 180 local and national businesses. Our unique approach requires volunteers to commit just 30 minutes a week for an entire academic year, using our bespoke digital platform. The results are transformative, significantly boosting children's reading confidence and ability. 

Our Early Literacy Intervention programme, focuses on keep-up support for children who are behind in phonics. Targeting children in Reception and Year 1, in schools that struggle to achieve good phonics screening and/or KS1 SATs results, this programme provides daily, 1:1, 7 minute phonics sessions. Using a bespoke technology tool, a trained Early Reading Interventionist (ELI) works individually with target children.

Across all our programmes, we aim to support In 2025-26 over 4,000 children across 13 different areas of England and Scotland.

Our culture and values

We are proud to be an organisation with the following five core values:

• ambitious
• empowering
• energetic
• inclusive
• optimistic

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

Chapter One is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value and celebrate diversity in backgrounds and experience and are deliberate about the kind of teams we are building. Literacy is a universal concern, and we need people from all backgrounds to maximise our innovation, creativity and impact. We especially welcome applications from persons who have experienced disadvantage and/or from those who are of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities who are currently underrepresented in the organisation. 

Chapter One is committed to safeguarding children and young people.   All postholders are subject to a satisfactory enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service disclosure. Copies of our Safeguarding Policy and Safer Recruitment Policy are available on request.