….for promoting public values
THE Rotary Club of Stabroek on Wednesday presented an award for promoting public values to the Ithaca Literacy Group at its weekly club meeting. The presentation culminated the club’s repertoire of activities to observe Rotary’s Literacy Month.
The group was selected for the award based on its strong commitment and vibrant efforts to reduce illiteracy in communities of Region Five and for demonstrating measurable results of its intervention in Ithaca.
Ithaca Literacy group is led by volunteer teacher, Yutende Grant, with support from parents and community members. The group aims to increase youth engagement in learning and the number of young people who can demonstrate written composition skills, including sentence and paragraph structure and numeracy skills.
Anecdotal evidence indicates marked increase in numeracy and literacy skills of beneficiary students. One of the unplanned results of the project is participating students are able to teach their illiterate parents to read and write. One of the participants, with assistance from Yutende, taught her father to read and write, and this capacity enhancement resulted in his achieving a promotion from cane-cutter to checker.
In 2009, Rotary Club of Stabroek brokered a partnership with the group and has since been providing books, teaching aids, stationery and other literacy resources to help youths struggling with learning differences and facilitating a structured, caring environment to help youths achieve academic success.