Africa-Press – Rwanda. The Reading Riders Project has received a donation of more than 450 bicycles that will be used as part of their campaign of reaching out to communities, inculcating the culture of reading.
Reading Riders Project was created through a partnership between Rwanda Bookmobile Initiative and Ready for Reading, which operates from Rwinkwavu in Kayonza District.
Using the bicycles librarian-story tellers will carry books and visit community libraries and Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres where they will lend and borrow books.
At ECDs, they will stop to read stories to children. Commenting on the donation, Shannon Porthault, one of the co-founders of Rwanda Bookmobile, described it as a facilitation to reach a wider audience.
“We are excited to reach more children across Rwanda. We often create storytelling radio and TV shows for children, but this donation will allow us to reach some of those children who cannot be accessible through media channels,” he said.
Through the Reading Riders project, librarians, ECD facilitators and schools across the country will be trained and empowered to use bicycles to improve their outreach to serve their local communities through riding a bicycle.
The donation from USA and Canada is also set to allocate bicycles across the country and pursue a “mission of inspiring Rwandan children to love to read” through an easy distribution of books.
Betsey Dickey, the founder of Ready for Reading also hailed the donation which is coming to support a project he said was welcomed by Rwandans. “This is a wonderful new chapter in our story as we have already started a test phase for this programme and the children together with teachers love it. Our Reading Riders do, too!” he said.
