On April 6, 2018, KEEP dedicated a 6th Reading Room at the Moses Wefur public school in Logan town, Monrovia. The “room” is actually two with one designed for early grade students and another for the upper grade students.
Located in a densely populated community in the outskirts of Monrovia, the government (public) school has 720 students and staffed with 32 teachers and goes up to grade 6. Currently the school has 32 teachers, all of whom have teachers certificates. They have an active PTA participation which has ensured the school’s management and service delivery.
As part of our core goals of promoting a culture of Reading, we see this as another opportunity to not only encourage students to read, but also providing them a safe, conducive, enriched space where they can do just that.
Making remarks at the formal dedication program, Deputy Education Minister Alexander Duopu thanked the authorities of the school and called on parents to work with various schools’ administrations to ensure children grow in an improved way as they acquire better education.
Also present was Assistant Minister for Basic Education, Min. Felicia Doe-Somah who lauded KEEP for not only this initiative but also on all of its reading room projects which supports the Ministry’s efforts. She described the establishment of reading room s and Libraries as a priority of the Ministry to ensure that children choose reading as a startup course in their academic sojourn.
“We are hoping that students and the administration will make the best use of the facility. This is the kind of effort we welcome,” Minister Somah said.
She also lauded the Principal Solomon W. Bartee and the teaching staff for the effort in bringing the school up to standard and greatly impacting the students with informed knowledge. Minister Somah added that teaching the pupils to read will help them to overcome all other subjects, to include English, Mathematics, and Science. She told the students that reading will help them to know about other people’s culture and improve their results in those subjects.
Fully sponsored by Guarantee Trust (GT) Bank under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, the goal of establishing this room is to have more students utilizing the Reading Rooms for both research study as well as leisure reading. This will be encouraged through establishing book clubs, spelling contests, storytelling hours, arts sessions, etc. all of which will be used as strategies to get them to read more.
During the set aside “I Can Read” reading sessions that KEEP will organize, volunteers from both the community and the GT Bank family to come in the help the students with homework, reading, etc.
