Celebrating the success of the Ramotse Reading Intervention.
There’s a saying that when you open a book, you open a world – a world of words and possibilities. Reading empowers communities and has a knock-on effect. And that’s why we were so excited to celebrate Round 1 of our Ramotse Reading Intervention this year.
The celebration was a culmination of a four-month intensive reading programme to improve the literacy levels of Grade 4 and 5 learners at the Ramotse After Care Centre.
Proud parents and prizewinning participants
Proud parents joined our facilitators, volunteers, the Abba’s Pride team and Pastor Oupa Nkoana to salute our little learners for their achievement. We also acknowledged the amazing effort of our facilitators for completing their training, and thanked our volunteers for their dedicated support.
A video, recorded by the lead facilitator over the course of the programme, was shown at the event, while two volunteers spoke movingly about the children’s response to the programme. Then three ‘graduates’ of the intervention read the stories that they had written while on the programme.
Certificates and gifts were handed out by Pastor Oupa to the learners, facilitators and volunteers. One parent thanked Abba’s Pride for the intervention and shared the good news that her daughter has topped her class in English – and she would be receiving an award at the school’s prize-giving later that day!
From struggles to success
This was an absolute testament to the success of the programme – from struggling to read to scooping the Number 1 spot in English! – and evidence of God’s intervention and favour in our lives.
At the end of the celebration, several parents were interviewed, and it was heartwarming to hear how the intervention had positively altered their attitude to reading, and how their own reading habits had changed significantly – they prefer to be caught reading by their children! On top of this, they could clearly see the progress their children had made, and would encourage other parents to send their children to the intervention next year. They also promised to advocate for parents to be involved in their children’s reading and learning at home.
What our celebration affirmed was that a small intervention can spread like a ripple through communities. Ramotse village was raising ambassadors for reading before our eyes.