Final year students of the school of performing arts ingehe University of Ghana majoring in theatre for development have embarked on a reading project in the Hehekpoe township, a small community in the Adaklu Wanya district of the Volta Region.
This project is solely concentrated on using popular theatre as well as participatory theatre to inculcate the habit of reading in the pupils of the Hehekpoe Salvation Army School which serves the children of the village and other surrounding vilages. They did this in partnership with Adanu an education centred organization also based in the Volta Region.
The project started from the 15th to 17th of march with the main activity being a durbar with the chief, elders and the rest of the community in attendance. The durbar was in three sessions with the first session consisting of poem recitals, speeches on the importance of reading as well as music and dance performances from the entire community.
The second session was divided into four concurrent sessions where parents and teachers had the opportunity to visit different sessions to be part of the activities their children where partaking in. The activities during this session was spelling bee, word games, reading aloud and reading comprehension.
The final session involved a drama performance that was scripted and acted by a section of the children, parents and teachers of the school. The drama was tailored to bring out the benefits of learning how to read and the consequences of refusing to read. It was crowned by the inauguration of the Reading Club of the school by the Project managers Miss Ellen Ansah and Miss Emefa Kumaza.
One of the project managers Miss Emefa Kumaza addressing the durbar threw more light on why they named the project Reading Clinic on wheels. According to her ”reading is of great importance for any community to develop since literacy in general goes a long way to affect the lifes of every society and for that matter the absence of a reading culture is a disease that must be treated and the hehekpoe community is the first stop for the ‘wheels’. This will start a ripple effect to improve the literacy rate in our country’’ she said.
In a speech read on his behalf, the member of parliament of the Adaklu constituency where the project took place, Honourable Kwame Agbodza expressed his delight and continuous support to projects like this that seek to help the children in his constituency get the best kind of education. He called on the parents present to support their wards as they cultivate a reading culture as this stage is very critical in the development of their personality.
Speaking on the sidelines of the project, the supervisor of the two project Mr Abdul Karim Hakib opined that projects like this are just one of the countless projects students of the school of performing art are capable of putting together. He went on to admonish cooperate Ghana to support such life changing projects.