Lucy Her Many Horses Named Volunteer of the Year for Unit II

From Rosebud, SD

Lucy Her Many Horses, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of Rosebud, S.D., became a RIF program coordinator as a direct result of her efforts to combat the poverty that has plagued the Rosebud Reservation for generations. As a community advocate and doctor, she saw the urgent need to make family literacy a priority on the reservation.

Her Many Horses took it upon herself to research RIF, became the program volunteer coordinator, and enrolled the Todd County School District’s 11 schools in the RIF program. "If children grow up being read to and learning to read themselves, there is nothing they cannot do," she stated. "And just as importantly, children who read will hopefully grow up to be parents who read to their children, and the cycle [will go] on."

As a RIF program coordinator, Her Many Horses instituted numerous incentive programs rewarding children and their families with books and other prizes when they met specific reading goals. She has been honored with a RIF Ingenuity Grant for her work distributing free books to infants and discussing the importance of reading with their mothers. Her greatest success, however, involves the launch and management of the "Reading Across the Rosebud Book Van." Volunteers use the van to distribute books to the geographically isolated communities of Todd County during the summer months when transportation to local libraries is particularly difficult.

As Chris Rhodes, a colleague in the Todd County School District stated, "Lucy is to be commended because she seeks to improve...the lives of an entire tribal national through literacy educations...It is her belief that the ability to read can lead a generation out of poverty."

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