The Ministry of Education is donating books to 16 schools country-wide. It is a part of the Minister Patrick Faber's plan of action to facilitate reading by providing students around the country with access to books - even as the habit of reading is fading into antiquity.
Only problem is Faber never made it to the event - but still, the ceremony pressed on at Saint Joseph's Primary.
The coordinator of the literacy unit spoke on the importance of the book donation:
Rose Bradley - Coordinator, Belize Literacy Unit
"Through the literacy unit, our goal then, is to insure that our students are reading at grade level or above. And we have seen from the results, that we are collecting - the data that we are collecting - that this is possible, and so, we try to achieve this goal by working with our teachers. Mainly, we focus on teachers because the research is showing that the teacher is very, very critical to the students' academic performance. Today, I want to say a very special thank you to UNESCO, who is making this occasion possible. One of the other things, we have been saying to teachers is to promote literacy to classroom, to read to the children every day, to develop the habit of reading, to cultivate and nurture that in the students. However the reality is that many of the schools do not have that resource; they don't have books. And so, one of the things we have been doing through the program is to provide classrooms with libraries. True Scholastics has been one of our donors, and now we have UNESCO. So I want to say a big thank you to UNESCO for this donation of books. 26 schools will be benefitting, schools in Belize City and schools in Dangriga. And so, we are imploring you, teachers, as you get the resources, to take good care of the books as well."
Under the programme,155 classrooms countrywide will be receiving books - but no one could say how many books in total are being distributed.
This particular parcel of books was primarily made possible through UNESCO.
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