Ethiopia Reads
Posted September 3rd, 2008 by Linda
Thank God you’re reading. Not just this article, anything at all. Reading entertains, informs and earns you great knowledge and en passant, it keeps your brain working. It is this culture of reading that Ethiopians need to take up if we are to push back the frontiers of literacy and bringing up children that are book-lovers is the effective way forward.
Ethiopia Reads is a foundation established in 2003 by Ato Gebregiorgis Yohannes to realize his vision of improving literacy and creating a culture of reading in this generation of Ethiopian children.
“Kids’ literature in Ethiopia is distressingly underdeveloped” says Ato Gebregiorgis. “The significant role that children’s books play in the development of children seems to be largely ignored and something needs to be done about it”. It is true, in Ethiopia, we don’t even have established kids’ characters apart from the very few like “mamo kilo” (silly mamo) while other parts of the world have their infinite ‘Pinochio’s, ‘Bucksbunny’s and ‘Cinderella’s.
To this end, Ethiopia Reads planted the first Children’s library with a collection of more than 16,000 books and serving all children under 18 for absolutely no charge. Later in 2005, it opened another free library with more than 5,000 books in Awassa. It also published thousands of children’s books in Amharic, Sidama, Oromiffa, Tigrigna and English and distributed them to school libraries around the country, building and furnishing a library where they didn’t have one. Apart from library works, free English, Art, Music and Theatre classes are given for children at Shola children’s library. The foundation makes use of volunteers and donors to give these services. Got skills in language, art, music, etc? This could be a call for you to volunteer to help less fortunate children. Ethiopia Reads would love to hear from you.
Again in 2005, it launched the first- ever mobile Donkey library in the rural villages of Awassa. Here, the donkeys are given names such as ‘Nigist Hilina’ (Queen Hilina) to excite the children and present the mobile library service in child-friendly ways.
The foundation also joins forces with authors to produce children’s books that tell ethnic tales from around Ethiopia making it possible for a child in Gambella for instance, to read a tale from Harar. The Kuraz Award is also a two-yearly award given by the foundation for authors of great books for children. If you’re into writing, this could be a challenge you can go in for and you may end up getting your work published and winning the Kuraz Award. Not so bad an idea, huh?
Ethiopia reads is a dynamic foundation that is action-based and result-oriented. The list is very long of the successes it has achieved so far and the wonderful job being done, but we had to summarize to this for a matter of brevity. We congratulate Ethiopia Reads for this excellent endeavor it has taken up on and if you wish to know more or get in touch with the Ethiopia Reads foundation, contacts are below.
Ethiopia Reads / Ethiopian Books for Children and Educational Foundation
Tel: 0114-670643, 0114-670644
Office: Beklo bet around Lancia, near BEKO furniture shop
Good story linda,
the worest thing that worries me is that the difficulty of reading unless one develop it as a habit usualy from childhood.Once a person learn to read and enjoy it it is easy to continue doing so ...specialy children with a lot of other options than reading worries me that they wouldnt have the chance to develop this unique skill for life.
i agree with u emishaw that children have a lot of options other than reading such as tv and games which keeps them away from reading but it is also the responsiblity of parents, brothers and sisters to kind of push them to read. and you will be amazed to see that children love story books and their characters very much once they get to see them .......and since children's attention span is short there has to be a helping family or elder peer to help them while reading. The other thing is that we don't have a culture of bed time stroy reading which is quite essential to children........may be i should write an article on this some time this week.....yes will do that .
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