My name is Sanne van Gessel and I am a master student in Linguistics at the University VU in Amsterdam. For my internship I travelled to Ghana, where I help children with their reading skills at a primary school in Takoradi and I read with the children in the library of the To Be Worldwide Educational Resource Centre. I clearly see the difference between the children at the school and the children in the library. The children at the school can barely read, the school doesn’t have any books and they don’t spend much time on reading during class time. 

When I came to the library and heard how well the children here can read, I experienced how important it is for the development of the reading skills to have the books and to use your time after school for reading. These children are fabulous readers!! And everybody knows: reading is the gateway to knowledge!  The first days in the library I read with all the kids to discover their reading skills, later on I selected some weak readers and now I read with them every afternoon when they finished school and come to the library. 

The improvement is fantastic and they learn fast, because they have the opportunity to go to the library and read books every day. On Saturday I join the activities in the centre, it’s great to see how proud they are with a good mark for a drawing and how much fun they have when we do a spelling game. When the children are in the library their motivation is high; they are ambitious, they want to learn and they do everything to reach their goal. I am very enthusiastic about the library and about the development of these children. And besides, I am falling in love with Ghana