TEACHING-EMPOWERING-MENTORING-BUILDING OPPORTUNITY Mission: to partner with individuals and communities in Western Kenya to support entrepreneurial activities, education and health through training programmes, scholarships, water and sanitation projects

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Read for the Top

The schools open at the beginning of January and everything is very busy: school selection, scholarship applications, purchasing uniforms.
Read for the Top was born in Victoria by a teacher at an inner city school. Its intention is to encourage reading in primary age children who either do not come from a reading culture, who have few books and other materials available to them, or who learn English as a second language. Often all three are true.
Victoria Rotary Club sponsored Read for the Top in a Victoria school last year and we thought it would be a wonderful thing to bring to Kenya. Children in our rural schools here meet all three of the criteria I listed and are greatly disadvantaged by hearing little English in their environment, yet all school exams are in English. Since a child's future depends on the results of one single examination session, they have little chance of progressing to a secondary school.
Through a Rotary grant we purchased books for Emmaloba Primary and last week I spent a day in the school setting up the programme. The children are in teams and have to read six books--four in English and two in Kiswahili.
In a month or so we will run heats and the final before I leave in March. The school will keep the books and can repeat the programme with another group.
Class six seized on the books and set to reading right away

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