Building reading skills among children is a collective responsibility: Getting community buy-in for children’s education

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Thurseday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Getting community buy-in for children's education

Proposal

In Rwanda there is rapidly growing recognition of the critical role parents and community members can play to support children’s literacy development and eventually build a culture of reading for learning. Research has shown that the involvement of parents is a generally recognized factor in the success of their children (Jennings & Bosch, 2011, p.3; Clark, C. 2007). However, as the needs of families grow more varied and complex, especially in rural areas, the challenge of providing opportunities for parents to engage in children’s reading becomes an increasingly formidable task. Through the Home Grown School Feeding Program (HGSFP) led by the World Food Program in partnership Word Vision (WV), the project is reaching approximately 85,000 girls and boys in 104 schools in Nyamagabe, Nyaruguru, Karongi and Rutsiro districts in the western and southern districts of Rwanda. Besides teachers and school administrators, the program engages parents and community members in a series of workshops to create awareness of their critical role as partners in children’s literacy development and mobilizes volunteer facilitators to lead extracurricular reading clubs. This presentation will discuss applied research findings from the Rwanda HGSFP that can be considered for successfully acquiring community buy-in for supporting children’s education.
The primary motivation for involving parents in children’s literacy development is to develop daily literacy practices at home to promote a family culture of reading that will improve children’s reading outcomes. A parent is a child’s first teacher and the first school is the home. However, it is not only the responsibility of parents, but also the child’s community to impart a love for learning in the child so that she/he can become a life-long learner. The child should receive regular help from parents, community members and teachers.
The HGSFP involves parents and community in a range of community action activities geared towards improving reading. One of the unique ways the project engages parents and communities to have ownership of reading activities is through the creation of locally generated short stories. Parents and community members have developed 34 titles and over 59,000 copies of these story books have been printed to supplement a series of procured child-friendly story books, which the project distributed in the book banks of 312 community-based reading clubs. The reading clubs are fun learning spaces that attract both in-school and out-of school students who come to read every weekend, facilitated by close to 1,000 volunteer male and female facilitators. Students borrow books from the book banks which they read at home with support of their parents or another member of the family. Other community-led events to help children read include peer-to-peer reading buddies and read-a-thon competitions. These combined community and home-based initiatives, supported by HGSF but mostly led by community volunteers, parents and other members of the community, equip and empower communities to take leadership for improving literacy of children in their communities.

Author

• Mary Kulabako, World Vision International