Stanchart launches project to improve childhood literacy
Standard Chartered Bank Ghana Plc has launched a project to engage over 400 young learners from four schools within the Kanda East Municipality.
The schools are Kanda AMA Basic, Kanda Estate 3 & 5 Basic School, Ring Road Basic School and Islamic Training School
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Dubbed: ‘the Standard Chartered Reading Club’ it forms part of the bank’s community engagement programmes which seek to provide young learners with opportunities to enhance their reading skills while developing reading habits.
In a release issued by the bank, it said the Bank shares in the commitment of contributing towards the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 - Quality Education by improving reading and access to age-appropriate books for basic school children and ensuring that they have the right engagements with volunteer readers to improve their literacy skills.
The Company Secretary for the bank, Angela Okai, said “we believe that helping our children acquire reading skills at an early age will not only expand their vocabulary but build their self-confidence, make them creative and help them to acquire a habit of life-long learning.
Beyond the children, we would also build the capacity of teachers, providing them with resources to enable them to support the children ensuring the sustainability of the project.”
Improving basic education
The Executive Director for United Way Ghana, Felix Kissiedu-Addi, said the project forms part of United Way Ghana’s Improving Basic Education Project strategy which ensures that all children of school age are enrolled in school at the right age and have access to the required resources and engagement to promote lifelong learning.
He said results from the pre-assessment conducted on the young learners indicate that 49.80 per cent of the young learners were able to read lower primary books, while only a harrowing 36 per cent understand what they read or was read to them.
He said the key expected outcome from the project is to have at least 80 per cent of the young learners being able to understand the books they read at their class level.
Activities
Activities outlined for the year will focus on teachers’ capacity enhancement, assessments on young learners’ literacy levels, and periodic literacy engagements with employees from the bank, volunteers from the community and class teachers. The project will run for a period of 36 weeks, from February 20, 2023, to December 4, 2023.
To ensure that all engagements are effective, the engaging schools will be provided with relevant literacy materials comprising age-appropriate books, literacy board games, jigsaw puzzles, Flash Cards and Chess Games.
“The project is being implemented in partnership with United Way Ghana with support from the Ghana Library Authority, the Ghana Education Service and Kanda East Municipal Assembly. The Reading Project is intended to take off with the establishment of reading clubs in the four schools,” the release said.