The Spitfire Club

love of reading  |  love of self  |  love for girls across all communities 

At The Spitfire Club, we want every girl to become the empowered, strong, and capable protagonist of her own story. We work to achieve this through carefully curated (and FUN!) out-of-school time book clubs that celebrate the Spitfire values of curiosity, resilience, empathy, authenticity and tenacity.

Spitfire lessons are built around excellent diverse books and experiential learning, and they are bolstered by small-group reading support, home library building, and caregiver engagement.

Each week, Spitfire is reading and playing with over 85 spunky, smart, amazing girls in Alexandria.

Not only that, this school year, Spitfire has provided our girls with over 800 books for their home libraries! 

We partner with out-of-school-time programs (affordable housing communities, Title I schools, libraries, recreation centers, and similar groups) to offer hour-long Spitfire Clubs on a weekly basis.

Our programming is free of cost to both providers and participants.

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We asked our partners how Spitfire benefits their students. Here's some of what we heard:  

"My kids love Spitfire! Every day, they ask if it's 'the day the girls stay late.' Every Wednesday is the best day."

"Spitfire has been a safe place for girls to read because sometimes they're hesitant in the classroom. They're worried they're going to get made fun of or put down. But because Spitfire accepts students of all English proficiencies, all reading levels, all backgrounds, it's a really inclusive environment."

"Literacy is something we have to work at at our school, so [Spitfire] brings a story to life. Girls get to do art projects, create things, and I can see their excitement every time they get to stay after school. And they never miss it. When it comes to Spitfire, they're always there."

"It's just so exciting to have a program - a partner - where my kids are really excited to read. Like really excited to go to a program that helps them academically."

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We have so much to be proud of! In seven years:

We have read with 554 unique (unduplicated) Spitfires via twelve site partners,

Our participants have logged reading 74,808 books,

We have distributed over 4,500 books to Club participants,

Our average quality rating from caregivers is 4.9/5 and 100% of survey respondents have ranked our programming quality as a 4 or 5,

Nearly every caregiver has reported that their child improved socially/emotionally as a result of our work, with an average score of 4.8/5.

​If you'd like to see more kids who love to read, love themselves, and love girls across all communities, consider supporting our campaign today! And thank you!