Michael Ssali
6 July 2009
Masaka — Salama Shield Foundation (SSF), an international NGO that has been involved in development work for twelve years in Lyantonde District, is working towards building a reading culture in the fifty or so schools in the area.
Last month, a trailer truck delivered more than twenty thousand books, hundreds of science teaching equipment, sports bikes and plenty of other sports equipment to Lyantonde Community Development Centre.
SSF runs the Community Development Centre and already has a fairly well stocked community library. "We carried out research among the teachers in the various schools and they all said they had no books for their students to read, especially science books, general knowledge books, and novels," said Mr Kenneth Barigye Mugabo, the SSF country representative.
"We intend to distribute the books and equipment to all the fifty something schools in the district - primary, secondary, government aided, private, registered or unregistered," Mr Barigye Mugabo added. District Chairman Fred Nayebare was so pleased by the donation that he joined a team of Salama Shield Foundation (SSF) volunteers to offloaded them. "The books and other equipment have arrived at the time we needed them most for uplifting the standard of education in the district. They will greatly assist us in the implementation of the Universal Secondary Education and UPE," he said.
Mr. John Turyagenda, retired teacher in Lyantonde Town said, "The arrival of the books from Canada should serve as an eye opener to the educationists in this country. Instead of only going abroad to get secondhand cars, TVs, clothes, and other not so useful items, more people should be encouraged to go abroad and solicit second hand books to stock our school libraries. "A lot of young people coming out of our colleges and universities these days greatly lack the reading culture because it is not cultivated when they are in school."
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