This study examines the efforts of student volunteers to motivate participation in a school-wide Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) program at a large urban high school. The researcher recruited a group of twenty student volunteers to visit classrooms and implement activities aimed at motivating their peers to read during SSR. Such activities help ensure the success of SSR programs, but few teachers at City High School were implementing them on a regular basis. The volunteers met repeatedly as part of an iterative cycle of choosing and preparing activities, implementing them, and then reflecting on their effectiveness. Activities the researcher had prepared in advance went unused as the volunteers first focused on their need to understand the state of SSR at their school and their peers' perceptions of it. They then called on their status as students to choose appropriate activities to motivate reading among their schoolmates. The SSR Volunteers, as well as the teachers who hosted them, perceived their efforts as fruitful based on student response. The volunteers were effective at choosing activities, and those activities were successful in various ways, despite some volunteers' frustrations with their peers' disruptions or apparent apathy. Support from target room teachers was beneficial, but underutilized by the volunteers. Most important of the findings was that the volunteers, more than the activities, were the linchpin of the project because their needs and actions drove it. Their centrality empowered them and provides a model for engaging students in efforts to improve SSR or other aspects of the educational environment. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]