The United Bank for Africa (UBA) Foundation has donated books and educational materials to the Maple Leaf Early Years Centre for the use of internally displaced children other children.
Making the donation on behalf of the UBA Foundation, a Business Manager at the UBA, Abuja, Mrs. Iniobong Chuku, said the gesture was in furtherance of the Foundation’s “Read Africa” initiative and also part of events to mark the International Day of Education.
“‘Read Africa’ is UBA Foundation’s initiative aimed at reawakening the fast declining reading culture amongst African youths and children.
“The interest and passion of our children in reading is on the downhill, hence this initiative to rekindle that reading culture and passion for informative and educative books by among our children.
“In particular, we understand the challenges faced by internally displaced children in Nigeria in terms of access to education. So, the Foundation did not waste time in donating these books to the Maple Leaf Early Years Centre, which is dedicated so much to taking education and literacy to these children.
“We believe the children will find the books interesting. We also believe the children and their parents will find hope in this gesture, knowing that we are committed to supporting the tireless efforts of the government and public-spirited organisations like this centre to alleviate their challenges”, Inibong said.
Expressing gratitude to the UBA Foundation, the Executive Director of Maple Leaf Early Years Foundation, Mrs. Ifedinma Nwigwe, said the Centre was ready to develop and deepen mutually beneficial partnership with the UBA Foundation, describing the mandates of both Foundations as “a match made in heaven”.
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“One of the many programmes we run here is the ‘Everyday Reading Programme’ where the children are accustomed to visiting the library of the resource centre on site. The exercise happens each day at scheduled times and the children visit the library, browse for books of interest, and then choose books that they would like to read or be read to.
“The purpose of this initiative is to teach the children how to handle books, introducing them to a love of reading intentionally and not as a chore and then also how to store books appropriately.
“We also have a pilot literacy programme with the children from the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp at Durumi, Abuja. This programme includes making reading fun by attaching a resource room to our library and including a component of extra curricular literacy activity time where the children play board games like Scrabble, and Monopoly, as well as activities like Spelling Bee, Debate Teams and arts and crafts activities targeted at teaching the children to read”, Mrs. Nwigwe said.
