A reading centre focused on assisting children in Namuka Village, Nakelo was opened yesterday.
The initiative by the Naiyaga family was birthed out of an idea adopted from a community in Canada to improve reading in children.
Malakai Naiyaga said this inspired the Naiyaga family to convert their home into a reading centre for Year 1 to Year 8 students.
He said the family’s love for books and their desire to improve literacy and numeracy made them open their doors to the village children.
“The focus was for those from Year 1 to Year 3 because they are learning to read during that phase,” he said.
“We adopted this from a Canadian community, it is a reading circle model called the Frontier College.
“We provide a safe environment for children to come and that’s for different classes and we provide the books for different categories then we allocate certain days in a week for them to come.
“It is only a once a week program and we will train volunteers.
“Volunteers will read, there is a one on one reading or the child reads to the volunteer, maximum one to two and so that is how the model works.
“This is for all those that are interested, it does not differentiate on whether people who are keen readers or those that are still learning.”
Mr Naiyaga said similar initiatives had been in existence is some rural communities in Fiji.
