On Tuesday, 11 October , 2022, Worldreader Ghana in commemorating this year’s International Day of the Girl Child organised a literary event for schools at the DUNK Library in Jamestown, Accra. The event is dubbed “The Girls DigiRead X’perience “ and it was in partnership with Women in Public Relations (PR), Ghana.
“The Girls DigiRead X’perience“ which is the second edition by Worldreader Ghana, among many other things seeks to empower girls through literary advocacy to realize their dreams.
Activities observed on the day were “Girls-Girls Chat” which saw a resource person have a conversation about Reproductive Health issues with students, a Read with Women in PR session, Conversation on the theme of the Book of Focus “Ayanda Says No to Child Abuse” and ‘Blast a Balloon and Read Along!’.
Three schools participated and they were Alko International School, Hamsptead Academy and Glorious Prince Academy
International Day of the Girl Child is an international observance Day declared by the United Nations and was first celebrated on October 11, 2012. The observation of this day supports more opportunity for girls and increases awareness of gender inequality faced by girls worldwide.
This inequality included areas such as access to education, nutrition, legal rights, medical care, and protection from discrimination, violence against women and forced child marriage.
This year’s International Day of the Girl Child for 2022 was themed “Our time is now—our rights, our future.”
The Content Acquisitions Manager, West Africa, Worldreader, Kezia Agbenyega prior to the reading session explained the concept of Booksmart app to the students: and how they can use it as a digital library. This was soon after an interesting ‘energizer activity’ by the event coordinator, Oswald Okaitei.
In a conversation with Faith Senam Ocloo, founder, women in PR she indicated that it was imperative for them as women in a professional network to help build the young ones as they built themselves.
“It is also important that as we are building ourselves and our profession, we also hold the hands of the younger ones, and what better way to do that than to make this day by partnering an organisation that is encouraging people to read,” she added.
It was indeed a well planned and executed event as excitement was all over the participants (pupils) in the course and even after the closing session. The event was supported by e.tv Ghana and session was moderated by Miss Eunice Tornyi, host of African Women’s Voices of the television network.
Worldreader is an international non-profit organisation with the vision to nurture readers. Besides this event have in the past years been in the front promoting reading and advocating for the use of their digital library, BookSmart in that regard. Other events they spearhead include the MPs DigiRead Train, Accra DigiRead X’perience, BookSmart Activation Train Series among many others.
