The British Council in collaboration with HSBC has embarked on a project to foster reading in children, by engaging them and their respective teachers and families in a series of activities, community events and competitions based on reading. 

The first HSBC Kids Read Community Event will be held in Colombo on 26 September 2015 at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute Gardens from 09.00 a.m. to 12.00 noon. 

The second community event will be held in Kandy on 03 October 2015 at the E.L. Senanayake Children’s Library, Kotugodella Veediya, Kandy from 9.00 a.m. to 12.00 noon.

Both events are open to the public and admission is free.  

This is a regional project and has already taken place in many countries in the Middle East and Asia, including Hong Kong, Vietnam, Japan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. 

The project works on two levels: primary school level and community level.  It works directly with 7 government primary schools in Kurunegala, Wariyapola, Kandy, Dehiowita, Horana and Negombo, reaching over 1600 pupils in grades 1 to 6, inspiring themwith the love of reading as both a means of pleasure and as a way of learning the English language.  

Over 220 primary reading books will be presented to each participating school. These comprise an assortment of around 50 popular UK storybook titles. The books will be housed in book boxes to make the sharing and use of the books easier.  Each school will have in their ‘book boxes’ class sets of books – one for each pupil, Big Books for the teachers to tell stories from, and a selection of single titles for the age range which pupils can borrow and read at home. The books have been carefully selected by a panel of experts, ensuring that the books are culturally appropriate and cover multiple age levels. 

The primary English teachers will be trained in how to exploit these books with their pupils and how to foster independent reading outside of school time in their classes. 

The teachers will be provided with the opportunity of receiving access to the British Council’s ‘Learn English’ website along with ‘HSBC Kids Read!’ packs of practical, ready-to-use classroom materials. These will be complimented with trainer’s notes, hand-outs and resource lists, in hopes of further extending the outreach of the project’s core principles and values. The training workshops are planned to cover an array of topics covering the practical applications of storytelling, assessing reading and strategies for reading.

It also works at a community level. Through 4 HSBC Kids Read Community Events in Colombo, Kandy, Jaffna and Galle between now and January, the project hopes to encourage children to read stories and thus adopt the reading habit. These events are open to the public and parents are invited to bring their children to participate in them. Local schools will also be encouraged to send groups of pupils. British Council English teachers and HSBC volunteers will work together to deliver workshops which foster the love of books. Children and parents can participate in a morning of storytelling and other events connected to books. 

To register or for any enquiries, please contact British Council Customer Services on +94 11 7521521.  For more information, please visit: www.britishcouncil.lk