SURF’s Good Gifts Mobile Library

SURF Chief Executive, Samuel Munderere, with winners of the storywriting competition launched with the Good Gifts Mobile Library
SURF Chief Executive, Samuel Munderere, with winners of the storywriting competition launched with the Good Gifts Mobile Library

The Good Gifts Mobile Library has been serving more than 1,600 students at Rugando and Kimihurura primary schools. The project has been growing tremendously and it has made a great impact on the reading culture of the students. For some of the students it was their first time to hold a book in their hands and read a story outside of their school subjects.

When buying books, we made sure they have stories that will motivate students to read and it has been a successful plan. We have three volunteers including the tricycle driver, who travel twice a week to Rugando primary school, and three times a week to Kimihurura primary school, and spend at least a couple of hours helping students to read each time they go.

Some students prefer to read independently, others like to read in groups. At the end of each reading session, a few students give a summary of what they read to the whole group. It’s a fun and learning experience!

To encourage attendance, those who attend often received prizes that included school bags, pens, mathematical sets and other basic school materials. During the last school term, we introduced a storytelling and writing competition where students write their own stories to be assessed and graded by the volunteers. They collected over 650 stories!

When students were in the holidays, our volunteers were busy looking at those stories. And this past month we returned to the two participating schools to award the top 30 students who wrote the best stories. Each pupil received a school bag, 5 exercise books, and pens – funded by Good Gifts too. 

This is one of a number of projects funded by Good Gifts, about which you can learn more from this short film which we have edited to mark the 25th Anniversary of SURF this year.

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