The Reading Festival is scheduled to take place at various schools and the University of St. Martin (USM) today, Friday, October 18, and tomorrow, Saturday, October 19. According to organisers, this event represents a significant opportunity to positively impact the lives of over 2,000 children by capturing their imagination and fostering a love for reading, particularly among elementary school students, as well as their parents and teachers. It offers engaging activities and interactive games, all centred on the captivating world of books.
The Reading Festival St. Maarten is a collaboration between Biblionef Netherlands, Help our Children Foundation, St. Maarten Library, University of St. Martin and the Ministry Education, Culture, Youth and Sports (ECYS), with the joint aim to create a world where every child celebrates the joy of reading.
The Reading Festival serves as a platform to promote the importance and joy of reading. The intention is to engage at least 126 local teachers from 21 primary schools and various educational institutions in St. Maarten to kick-start a reading movement and inspire schools to host similar activities independently.
This dynamic event not only celebrates reading, but also creates an atmosphere of learning and creativity for children. Through a variety of activities such as workshops, storytelling sessions, and author visits, the festival aims to capture the imagination of children and cultivate a love for reading. By encouraging participation from teachers, parents, and the broader community, the festival seeks to instil a culture of reading that extends beyond the event itself, fostering a lifelong passion for literature and learning.
On Friday, children from the upper cycle one (6-7 years old) will participate in various reading activities with their teachers. These activities aim to promote enjoyment and stimulate reading as well as inspire teachers in the upper cycle to incorporate the activities provided at the festival into their curriculum and to create other activities. The same day, volunteers with the help of trainee teachers and writers will visit the schools to organize activities for the rest of the cycle 1 children.
On Saturday, the festival takes place at USM, open to all target groups between 10:00am and 8:00pm. Children and their parents can engage in various fun activities that will help cultivate a positive reading culture, such as drama theatre; a puppet show; a reading workshop; storytelling; story time; arts & crafts; meet the author; a digital library; a reading pyjama evening; face painting; a book exhibition & reading promotion; and a read-a-thon. In addition, every child will receive a brand-new book at the end of the Reading Festival.
Low reading levels are not only a problem for ministries of education but also for the community. The activities at the two-day festival are vital for creating a lasting reading culture.
Through collaboration with the ministry and the schools, the organisers aim to encourage a reading culture in the country. “It is important to host reading festivals at schools as well as partner with the schools to ensure that everyone has the same information about the importance of reading. Ministries do not have the resources to create such an awareness campaign and with our help, we can contribute to instilling a reading culture in the country,” they explain.
Around 2,500 children will benefit directly from this Reading Festival, but many more are expected to benefit in the long term from the handbook of activities developed to ensure sustainability and continuity for their teachers, libraries, and other organizations at this Reading Festival. These resources will be made available to schools to facilitate the implementation of similar projects in the future. The goal is to instil a culture of reading in the lives of the children participating in the reading festivals.
The benefits for the children, parents and teachers experiencing exciting reading activities are as follows:
- A better stimulation and development of imagination, fantasy and empathy.
- Enhanced awareness of the importance of reading.
- Inspiration for similar activities.
- For younger children: nurturing the love of reading at a very early age.
- Learning for younger children by looking at the pictures and interpreting what they see.
