By Mary Mensah-Anochie
A new word… Suddenly your mind opens to a new reality. What could this mean?? Where could this place be? I wonder how it looks. Can I see myself in him/her? You can only see where the light is shone. So if the light doesn’t extend farther you might be discouraged from going further unless you get a glimpse of what is ahead and what options lie ahead of you. August 14th to 16th 2019, saw the maiden edition of the Book Camp hosted by the foundation for Primary school kids.
The camp was created as a means to make books in areas of Science and Biography available to kids, in order to improve their reading habits, their vocabulary as well as their writing skills. During this 3-day book camp, we introduced a new learning style to the kids different from what they are used to during their normal school periods. Each child had two different books, were made to understand specific themes from the books with an activity-based teaching style and were made to express their own thoughts about each book.
Giving them the challenge to personalize what they learned from each book and having some of them read out their own essays led to most of them becoming more confident in expressing themselves. The kids also got to learn about people who were brave enough to turn the tides in their favor or were curious enough to change history. From these stories, you could see them become inspired.
Every child should be given the right to know, the right to dream and the right to achieve. This is not the case for these kids. Living in these impoverished communities, with way below par education and no resources available to give, them a chance in believing that there is more than their eyes can see and they can reach for that. They are left to the mercies of the innate passion they were born with that can only keep them pushing until their innocence is ripped from them and they face the harsh realities of responsibilities and growing up. In addition, this usually happens by age 10. We cannot keep waiting on the government to care for these ones.
It can barely handle nor improve on the civilization, which our colonizers left behind talk less of creating civilization for these people. It is left to us, to act on our moral duty of making the world a better place one community at a time and bringing the needed exposure that the people and children of these communities still living in a world that should have existed decades ago need. Some of us have never even experienced life like what is seen in these communities and cannot even imagine it. Books are one way to keep the imagination of these kids alive for as long as possible, and having a camp like this keeps them motivated to keep learning and return to school.
Here is a sad story for you, on the last day of the camp one of the kids , a young girl came up to me and asked “madam is this really the last day?” the sadness that welled up in her eyes as I said “yes” broke my heart. If we put our hands together we can ensure that more girls like Rita and boys, have more of this experience and maybe even longer than 3 days. Together we can “empower the child” by “educating them”!!!
Posted On:
September 3, 2019
