The Sustainable Development Goal 4 states that by 2030 all children must have access to quality education, this is what Literareach Initiative tends to achieve by donating over 200 books to the Osun State library.
The donation of the books were done alongside granting of Scholarships to 10 primary school students of the Anthony Udofia Primary schools, on Monday in Osogbo.
The Founder of the initiative, Dr Lateefat Odunaga joined virtually, while different personalities and stakeholders from the education sector were present at the event.
While speaking with Executive Director of the Initiative, Lukman Adeoti explained the reasons for choosing the primary school students, while imploring the library to make good use of the books.
“The younger generation are the future and we have to do everything we can to enable Thier future, that is why we want to catch them young, build into them the reading culture, so they can be good ambassadors of themselves and the school they represent.
“We also implore the Library to make judicious use of the books that have been donated to them”,he explained.
Speaking with the project team lead of the initiative at the official launching of the project, Rukayat Adekola explained that the progtamme had started six months ago, and there was a need to develop the potentials of the young ones.
“We want to grant some students of Anthony Udofia primary school and some of the participants we had during our summer reading bootcamp scholarship. We are also donating some books to the Osun State library and official launching of our initiative .
” After several conversations with the librarian, she stated that the children’s session hasn’t been in use, which means parents were not taking their children to read at the library.
“We had a meeting with our team, thereafter we came up with the reading bootcamp, we decided to engage them in the library and when we were there, some of the books were outdated already, and they were obsolete, we reached out to the executive director, and she saw a potential sponsor in new York, that wanted to donate books, we wrote a letter and we requested for some books and the books were sent to us”, she explained.
The Chief Education officer of Public School Department, Ministry of Education, Abolarinwa Tunde disclosed that the initiative would help to improve the educational sector of the state.
“this initiative is a welcoming programme, the organisation has been creating a child friendly environment as far as education is concerned in the State, and they have been contributing for the educational department of the State”, he explained.
The Osun State Librarian, Funke Tina Kolawole commended the NGO while also advising other NGOs, so stakeholders to make contributions towards the children’s future.
“We’ve looked forward to people helping the children, Government can not do everything alone, that’s why we’ve been inviting NGOs to come to our aid, the reading culture is enroding , we are trying to see how we can bring it up again, to make the students to be able to study”, she explained further.
Students also expressed their praises and gratitude to the NGO for making Thier education priorities and they promised to be good ambassadors in Thier schools.
