‘Kitaab Dost’ launched

Rawalpindi:The Association of Business, Professional and Agricultural Women (ABP&AW) IR Branch launched their project, ‘Kitaab Dost’ to celebrate Universal Children's Day.

The project aims to inculcate reading habits in children from an early stage. The event was held with students of Volunteers Foundation School, Kashana, with a group of 28 girls between the ages of 6 to 15. These children are residents of a public shelter home and had returned to school after a break of several months, as directed by the concerned department. During the event, Tahmeena Malik, president ABP&AW (IR Branch) highlighted the benefits of recreational reading; these benefits were cited as, reading leading to better thinking, critical and analytical skills, better writing expressions, creative imagination and building sufficient vocabulary. The session also entailed guiding the teachers on how to encourage children to read more by reading with them and explaining the content to them in a creative manner that generates and sustains their interest.

After the discussion, books by Gogi Studios were distributed free of cost among the children. General Secretary ABP&AW, Asma Naveed introduced child heroes Arfa Karim and Iqbal Masih. Handing over their sketches, she engaged them with Arfa Karim’s achievement as the youngest micro software scientist and of Iqbal Masih, Pakistan’s unsung hero. Children were asked to read and write about them in a fortnightly follow up activity.

The activity went very well with the theme song, written by Zehra Nigah and was presented by the schoolchildren ‘Hamain Kitab Chaheye.’ Recreational reading has become a thing of the past, with children occupying themselves with TVs, tablets, phones and video games instead. One main reason for children losing interest in reading stems from a number of factors, one of which is they are not sufficiently encouraged and incentivized to do so in their homes and schools. Another reason is the less than attractive content that some of these local books contain which is neither relatable nor fully comprehensible.