NLB to take reading sessions to children living in public rental flats

SINGAPORE - Madam Senthamarai Selvi enrolled her two children in a weekly reading programme beneath her block in 2018 to keep them from fighting – and for her to get some peace and quiet.

The kids loved it, and even after the family moved to Yew Tee in 2019, they insisted on making the 45-minute commute to Choa Chu Kang every Friday to attend it.

“They didn’t want to miss a session,” said Madam Selvi, 41, who works part-time in sales.

“When I was young, I couldn’t socialise easily,” said her daughter Muthaiyan Rudrapriya, 11, who has a nine-year-old brother.

“But after I joined kidsRead, I found it really easy to socialise. I like to hang out with my friends, and I’m the funniest one in that group.”

Rudrapriya is among nearly 80,000 children who have benefited from kidsRead, a programme launched by the National Library Board (NLB) in 2004 to cultivate the love of reading among children aged four to eight from lower-income families.

NLB marked the programme’s 20th anniversary with an event held at the National Library Building on Aug 31.

At the event, Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo announced the launch of kidsRead@Home, a new programme which takes reading sessions to children living in public rental flats.

This programme is an expansion of kidsRead which aims to reach more children from lower-income families, starting with about 100 kids over the next 12 months. This will help children whose families are not able to take them to the reading sessions, said Mrs Teo.

Mrs Teo recounted how as a child, she lost a prized book, The Magic Porridge Pot, and found it only years later when her family moved house.

“Post-independence, many children like me were fortunate to have this opportunity of early exposure to books, and this helped us to learn so much more about the world than we would otherwise have been able to, and they brought lifelong benefits.”

“But not all children are as fortunate,” she said, adding that kidsRead gives every child a chance to grow a love for reading.

At the event, guests of honour President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and his spouse, Ms Jane Ittogi, also read kidsRead participants a story, The Noisiest Tree by Evelyn Sue Wong.

Starting with 630 children in 2004, kidsRead has grown to engage about 3,500 children in more than 200 kidsRead clubs which were set up in pre-schools, primary schools and community clubs, among other venues.

kidsRead activities have also been customised for different age groups, including various reading levels on topics such as science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

Home activity packs are also provided for parents to read with their children, to build parent-child bonds and sustain the child’s interest in reading.

Children participating in kidsRead@Home will also get at least two new books to keep every year to spark their interest in reading.

After “graduating” from kidsRead when she turned nine, Rudrapriya and another former participant, Chew Yit Sim, 12, have come back to read to lower primary schoolchildren as volunteers, under the kidsRead Young Alumni programme.

“When I was small, I didn’t know how to read books and do the activities. The volunteers there would help me, and I was really happy and grateful,” said Yit Sim, adding that she now wants to do the same for her juniors.

Over the years, kidsRead has had more than 29,000 volunteers, with nearly four volunteers needed for every 10 children in the programme, said Mrs Teo.

For Madam Janet Law, becoming a volunteer with kidsRead in 2005 altered the course of her life.

It inspired the 57-year-old, then working as a manager at SBS Transit, to pursue higher education in her 40s to become a child literacy specialist.

Madam Law, who now works as a literacy teacher in pre-schools, recalled a pair of young siblings who kidsRead helped after their father died. Seeing the girl take her brother to sessions, the volunteers got her to help out with events and in guiding younger participants.

Said Madam Law: “So we saw this girl growing in confidence, because she transformed from a participant into a mentor.”

Madam Law and other volunteers also took the siblings and their mother out for meals to offer support. She said: “I remember it very deeply, because it reminds me, the impact of kidsRead goes beyond just teaching the children to read. We are helping to build a child holistically, we are providing community support to the family, and this is something that is more empowering than just reading alone.”