USAID Partnership For Education: Learning Holds National Reading Festival

Accra, GHANA – The first-ever National Reading Festival took place in Accra, Ghana, on November 24, 2015. The festival was organized by the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service, and USAID/Ghana through the Partnership for Education: Learning. It brought together national and local government officials, the private sector, USAID officials, education managers, teachers, parents, and primary school pupils to celebrate reading. The festival is one of 10 reading festivals taking place in each region of Ghana between November 17, 2015, and December 2, 2015.

The festival displayed thousands of books and held reading-related activities to inspire excitement about reading. These activities included poetry readings, spelling bees, drumming, dancing, teaching seminars, lectures, spoken word, and storytelling. As a follow up, a total of 4,230,000 books in English and Ghanaian languages will be distributed to 13,828 Kindergartens and 14,405 Primary Schools in all 216 Districts in Ghana in January 2016.

“We will all have to work together from the policy level to the school level to the home level to help our children get reading. The festival today is a crucial first step,” said Andrew Karas, Mission Director of USAID/Ghana. “Together, we can create a new generation of readers with bright futures. It is these young readers who will be moving the country forward for years to come,” he said.

The five-year, $71 million USAID Partnership for Education: Learning is supporting the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service to improve the quality of reading in Ghanaian schools. It is being implemented by FHI360 and a consortium of partners. Its aim is to increase the reading skills of 2.8 million primary school pupils in Ghana, while also working to improve basic education policy and management systems for sustainable learning outcomes and to strengthen parent, school and local government capacity and engagement to promote and support reading.

About USAID

USAID is the lead U.S. government agency that works to end extreme global poverty and enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential. For more than 50 years, USAID has supported Ghana in increasing food security, improving basic health care, enhancing access to quality basic education, and strengthening local governance to benefit all Ghanaian people.