KUCHING: The Sarawak State Library (Pustaka) through their Reading Seeds Programme is targeting 6,000 newborn babies this year to foster reading culture to children as soon as a child is born.
This was revealed by Minister for Welfare, Community Well-being, Women, Family and Childhood Development, Dato’ Sri Fatimah Abdullah during a courtesy call from Pustaka’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Rashidah Bolhassan and delegates, at Baitulmakmur, Petra Jaya here yesterday.
“Reading plays an important part of lifelong learning and this important skill should be developed as early as the child is born.
“The more the children read, the more they will know which will boost their confidence. When children develop their love for reading from young, they will become more motivated to continue reading and learning,” said Fatimah.
She added that experts had highlighted the potential of reading and talking to infants were not just for language and literacy development but also for other aspects of cognitive development.
“The Reading Seeds is a continuation of the Born to Read Programme, which was implemented by Pustaka since the year 2004.
“Through this programme, Pustaka introduced early literacy in the early stages of a child’s life by engaging mothers who play a major influence in their children’s critical time in the development of their lifelong literacy,” she noted.
According to Rashidah, the reading kits would be distributed to the mother of newborn babies throughout the state which contains various reading materials.
“This year, Pustaka is collaborating with two medical doctors in producing the reading materials as well as in determining the suitable reading materials for babies and toddlers whereby certain elements are taken into account.
“Among the elements are brightly, high-contrast coloured pictures of simple objects, books with little or no text, with good rhythm and bilingual, introduce concepts such as numbers, letters, colours and shapes in a fun way, wordless books or use of very little words to stimulate them both visually and mentally, and durable material for the books to survive chewing and are not easily torn and are safe to go into a baby’s mouth.
“The best part is, all these materials are produced by and involve the local people as part of our initiative to support our local entrepreneurs including wrapping and producing the goodie bags,” said Rashidah.
She added that there would be a workshop, Train of Trainers (TOT), for Reading Seeds programme as a strategy for effective training delivery as well as deriving maximum benefit by using the workplace to do the subsequent trainings for Trainers Pool.
“The trainers may include mothers, nurses, volunteers and local librarians. This is also to ensure that mothers who have received the training kits can be trained in much less time and at a lower upfront cost.
“The upcoming TOT will be held on 5 and 6 April 2018 at the State Library here and it will also be held in Sibu, Miri, Bintulu and Limbang,” she disclosed.
