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Set in New York City, the new movie "Precious" is striking a chord.

The film is about a 16-year-old Harlem girl who is obese, illiterate and sexually abused, and has fallen through the cracks in New York City's education system in the 1980s.

Precious Jones is a fictional character, but Joshua Greene says he’s living a very real nightmare. Like the character in “Precious,” Greene also slipped under the radar in the Bronx; he was promoted all the way to the 11th grade, barely able to read a single word.

"To me, there was no future,” says Greene. “It was just living day by day; not knowing what was going to happen, not thinking that I could do anything."

But as in the movie, there's an army of unsung heroes who are determined to rescue young people like Greene, lost in the system. Some of them work at the non-profit organization Advocates for Children in Midtown.

"Every day we see students who, like Precious, have really fallen through the cracks and more than anything want to learn how to read and get their education,” says Kim Sweet of Advocates for Children.

About two-dozen attorneys are in the trenches with young people like 21-year-old Kendall Troncoso from Brooklyn. Up until a few months ago, he read on a first-grade reading level.

"A lot of people were telling me I was real good with my hands, and they would say I'm going to most likely do something with my hands when I grow up,” Troncoso recalls.

"Kindergarten through age 19 and still he didn't have anything above a first-grade reading level, and they said, ‘there's nothing more for you, how about you learn to move boxes and that will be your career,’” explains William Meyer of Advocates for Children. “And instead, now he's made four or five years of reading progress in one year."

In the movie, a teacher at an alternative school mentors Precious, and staffers at Advocates for Children help by providing resources for students in need.

The not-for-profit organization, which has been hit hard by budget cuts, says it’s struggling to make ends meet, but attorneys say they refuse to give up on the city's youth.

"It hurts to see a student that if the school system had responded appropriately and early enough the student could've had the same chances that I had,” says Advocates for Children’s Christie Hill.

"The difference that you see you make in someone's life, you can't put a dollar figure on it,” adds Matthew Lenaghan of the organization.

Both Kendall Consoco and Joshua Greene are on the right track now. They are enrolled in programs that are teaching them to read and write.

"I could read things that I couldn't read before,” Greene says. “I had got a message from my best friend from a long time ago and I was able to read it.”

To learn more about the Advocates for Children helpline, call 1-866-427-6033 or go to AdvocatesforChildren.org.