SINGAPORE- For 15 minutes on Tuesday afternoon (Aug 23), property agents seated inside the Star Performing Arts Centre all read from the same page.
The 3,000 PropNex agents were reading excerpts from Winning With Honour: In Relationships, Family, Organisations, Leadership And Life by former civil service chief Lim Siong Guan and his daughter Joanne H. Lim.
It was for a good cause - the National Library Board's (NLB) largest 'Read for Books' session, where people come together to read for a charitable cause.
For every 10 people who read for 15 minutes, a book will be donated by OCBC and Scholastic to underprivileged families as part of the initiative. The programme is part of the National Reading Movement, which was launched earlier in June.
PropNex's reading efforts will see 300 books being contributed to needy families.
"Reading books is a wonderful way to learn,"said PropNex property agent Liao Huimin, who participated in the reading session. "Education is a tool to level the playing ground for the less privileged and it starts from young."
To encourage adults to read, PropNex is also participating in the library's outreach programme, Read@Work, to bring reading to the workplace. E-books and reading resources would be made available to the 5,700 PropNex agents through their staff portal.
"Many of us recognise the many benefits of reading and we encourage our children to read, but we ourselves find it difficult to set aside time to read," said NLB assistant chief executive for public library services Catherine Lau.
The programme hopes to encourage adults to continue reading outside the workplace, through content specially curated by NLB for various organisations.
PropNex's Ms Liao welcomed the launch, saying that reading is important for agents to improve themselves. "We need to value add for our clients," she said.
Correction note: An earlier version of the story stated that the programme is part of the National Library Reading Movement. This is incorrect. It should be the National Reading Movement. We are sorry for the error.
