Prime
UN envoy lauds Daily Monitor reading project
InterAid Uganda executive director Scholastica Nasinyama displays an NiE-branded a bag to pupils who turned up for this year’s launch of Daily Monitor’s NiE yesterday at St Athanasius Primary School in Mengo-Kisenyi under the theme readers are leaders. PHOTO BY MiCHAEL KAKUMIRIZI
What you need to know:
The seven-year-old project was started with a view to attracting young readers to reading newspapers.
Kampala- Interaid Uganda, a non-government organisation implementing United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) programmes, has applauded the Daily Monitor and several schools in Kampala for preparing young learners to read, write and interprete issues.
Speaking at the launch of this term’s Newspaper in Education (NiE) programme at St Athanasius Primary School in Kisenyi Mengo yesterday, themed ‘Readers are Leaders’, Ms Scholastica Nasinyama, the InterAid executive director, said: “UNHCR, under the Prime Minister’s Office, has partnered with schools and Monitor Publications to ensure that both national and refugee children improve learning.
We are here not by mistake but because you have excelled in NiE,”Ms Nasinyama said.
Ms Nasinyama also urged head teachers of schools teaching both national and refugee children of Somali, Congo, South Sudan and Eritrea origin to treat them with humility since majority left their countries because of war and are now orphans.
Mr James Onyango, the UNCHR adviser on education, said he was proud of NiE and advised children to take their studies seriously to become responsible citizens.
Mr Aaron Aguma, MPL’s head of marketing, said NiE started as an intervention to a World Vision report that showed that 70 per cent of UPE pupils were partially literate yet 30 per cent of the same number were reverting to total illiteracy.
