Bridge illiteracy gap with reading

Joyclin Ampofo, Chief Executive Officer of Rainbow Trust Foundation a non-governmental organisation has called on African countries to bridge the global illiteracy gap through proactive reading policy especially in the era of COVID-19.

Speaking with the Ghana News Agency in Tema, Mrs. Ampofo said African teachers should be reading role model to the children.

She noted that social media and other attractive offers on the internet have captured the attention of the youth when books have become a second tool.

“We must, therefore, help the children with attractive incentives to re-direct them to the books”.

Mrs Ampofo noted that a reading child is a winning child, hence, the Rainbow Trust Foundation launch of the project: “Books To Go,” which had stocked the selected schools with over 2,000 books.

The project would enable the students to borrow storybooks from the school library to read at home as we as during their free periods.

She said the project was being piloted in five schools- Apenkwah Basic School, English Amafomu Botiano, Ashaiman Government School, Medina Basic School and Ashaiman Secondary school.

Mrs Ampofo noted that the project had trained over 30 teachers to monitor it.

She said the Foundation was working together with their counterpart in the United Kingdom to bridge the gap and establish a library in schools within the Ashaiman municipality, which they would roll out to other schools.

The MCE said, Ashaiman is a deprived community with lots of challenges when it comes to money and the list of books donated by the Foundation for the project would be valuable to the children.