PHILIPSBURG, Sint Maarten – The Beyond Kultura Events Foundation (BKE) has closed off its STORY READING part of the Storytelling & Reading-EXPRESSIONS Program, with a Certificates Ceremony last Sunday at Café Axum in Philipsburg.
We started with the Story reading training of 9 participants, mainly mothers, aunts, to get the basics about Reading for Children. Aim was to bring fun in reading, since reading is FUNdamental for children.
This serves to enhance the listening skills, which is fundamental to comprehend and understand stories. 10 Entities have participated and 8 participants have accomplished this Beyond Kultura Story Reading program. After a weekend training, the readers went to schools, community centers, afternoon activity programs to read for children. Readers have been reading stories mainly in English, but 1 of them read stories in Dutch, to reach as much as possible children throughout our community with this story reading program. Beyond Kultura has reached more or less 2,000 children with this story reading program for the last 2 months.
Story reading for children certificates
The 8 certificated Story readers are equipped with the Basic techniques of Story reading for Children after a weekend training ‘Story reading for children’ and the visiting of entities like Community Centers or Afternoon School Programs, schools and a Children home, where each of them have been reading their own created stories to children in more or less 10 sessions.
The story readers were evaluated and coached during their assignments. Those coaches were Fraenseen Fowler, Vernon Illidge, Joycelynn Hanley. Ingrid Holaman served as the project leader and Loekie Morales as an overseer. Teacher-Instructors were Greta Marlin and Myrna Richardson.
‘We are most happy to present to Sint Maarten our first certificated story readers, who can serve our community with reading stories on events. They can also serve our Library and the schools during for example a Children book week or Story telling week,’ Loekie Morales stated.
Claudia Connor has handed over the certificates to the story readers on behalf of the Minister of Education Culture Youth and Sports.
Marjan de Visser (representative of Nederlandse Taal Unie) was present at the Certificate ceremony, where the readers have shared their experiences they had during their assignments.
The teachers-instructors, the representatives of our Sponsors and the chairlady of Beyond Kultura Events Foundation, Loekie Morales have been saying words of encouragement to the story readers for their future performances.
Loekie Morales says ‘I am very happy with the success of this ‘Story Reading for Children’ project. 100% of the participated candidates got their certificates. They have reached so many children with happy faces and adults,’ that all gives lots of satisfaction.
Rita Aikman, the treasurer of BKE says ‘We congratulate all our story readers for their dedication. We thank the primary schools, the afternoon activity school programs, the Community center of Sint Peters, sponsors, for getting on board and facilitate our process,’.
‘We could not get so far without the financial support of the funding agencies like the Cooperative Funds Caribbean (Samenwerkende Fondsen Cariben), The Prins Bernhard Cultural Fund Caribbean and the Dutch Literacy Funding Agency (De Nederlandse Taal Unie). We thank them wholeheartedly for believing in the aim of this project and for putting moneys, guidance and efforts in such an important project for Sint Maarten,’ Morales says.
‘Finally, If you need storytellers or story readers, you can reach out to Beyond Kultura Events Foundation and we can provide you of dedicated storytellers and readers,’ Morales concluded.
In the picture: Left Loekie Morales (president BKE), Teachers, coachers Vernon Illidge, Joycelyn Hanley , Project leader Ingrid Holaman and representative of the sponsors Nederlandse Taal Unie, Marjan de Visser (outmost right).
Photo credit: Alfonso Blijden
