With cooperation from schools administrators, teachers and librarians, the campaign aims to implant a love of reading among children, increase the rates of reading among them in addition to emphasizing the importance of reading in society. It targets third to eight grade children.
" Reading is rare in the Arab world which affects development in these countries, "said Nawaf Shamsan, assistant director of the British Council
"The British Council supports the youth in their campaign to spread awareness of the importance of reading, "he said "And we if it achieve success we might expand it to other governorates."
In the discussion, the campaign members, school principals, librarians and teachers discussed reading as an issue in the Arab world and compared it to Europe.
In their discussions ,they referred to the importance allowing children to choose what they read instead of assigning books, providing an ideal atmosphere, whether at school or at home and making sure that a child enjoys what he or she reads.
Transferring the campaigning activities to the five 5 targeted schools to educate about 2500 students about reading. The campaign also aims to establish reading groups among students themselves as a core student community love reading and to create a partnership between the existed school libraries, and those will be opened.
About 12 students from third to eighth grade will be selected from targeted schools to be trained by campaign members to become reading ambassadors to their schools. These students will lead different awareness activities for their school mates.
The campaign was started during the Sana'a book fair in October of this year and it gained the support of many of the fair visitors, educators and intellectuals.
"It is an excellent campaign,"said Abdulhabib Hizam, who is a teacher and researcher in education. "And it is an integral job between parents, teacher and school administrators.
Hizam said that students' preferences should be considered."There are students who like to read stories, others like to read science and some students are not interested in reading at all but they have other interests."
Providing an ideal atmosphere for a child to read is very important. The quietness, the variety of books and allocating periods for reading during school day all encourage student to read, according to Hizam.
"From observing what the students read, teachers can discover the inclinations of students," He concluded.
The campaign team has been trained in Jordan on building capacities, leadership skills and campaigning in order to enable them to implement projects that would be useful for their community. The design and delivery of creative community specific awareness campaigns by Global Change Makers target youth who are usually outside the reach of similar initiatives.
Global Changemakers is a British Council program that supports a global network of young activists who has demonstrated a significant track record of achievement in their local communities through social activism and volunteer work. These youth are part of a global network where they share ideas and model practices. They work individually and together on projects that directly impact the lives of those in their local communities.
See article in Yemen Times: