Back in the days, a lot of us grew up reading to be successful; the bookstores were there, our school libraries were filled with relevant books; the publishing firms existed. Today, these are fast becoming history; the reading culture is dead, and the end result is evident in the failure rate recorded in national examinations at over 80%. It is time we changed the tide, as the question remains: wh
at does the future hold for a nation with a youthful population that is not interested in studying, and to whom the reading culture is unattractive? When opportunities and understandings are blocked, moral decay and crime is the resultant effect; but with the power to read, any child can change her story. Hence, Ignite Africa developed the most aggressive and innovative reading intervention program, with our model Book Club and Book-To-Child Connection, which fosters a love of reading in young people, and effectively works to sharpen their comprehension ability, as we understand it is one thing to read, and a whole different ball game to comprehend what you read. We employ a research-based program model that gets results, as the ability to read and comprehend is core to student success beyond the classroom. Ignite Africa has impacted hundreds of school children across the Nation. We have established over 50 book clubs and Book-To-Child connection groups across 8 schools in Lagos State, and 6 schools located in 4 remote villages in the Onelga region of Rivers State. At Ignite Africa, we have a team of young, intelligent and exemplary graduate reading partners, who are fully intellectually involved with our student members. This is key to on-going growth and assets development. Each Reading Partner spends an average of 6 hours a month working with our student members. For every month with Ignite Reading Partner, our young members on average gain a minimum of 1.5 months of reading skills. We currently have about 3500 books to serve our students. We provide these books free to them for reading, as we encourage them to read at least 20mins a day. Then we create a warm and inviting atmosphere to study the books with them, after a certain time frame. We are currently developing a state of the art library website that makes registering, borrowing books, and monitoring the books for safe keeping more effective. This is all free to our young members.
