Library hosts holiday activities
A number of holiday programmes will take place at the Yeoville Library.
The programmes will see entities such as Joburg Water and The Johannesburg Zoo invited to educate the community on various issues. The Ready to Read programme is aimed at pre-school children from disadvantaged pre-schools in and around Yeoville.
“The City of Johannesburg (CoJ) will provide the resources needed to achieve our goals. Skilled people will be at hand to impart their knowledge regarding aspects such as book reading, story telling and taking care of books to teachers at the various pre-schools,” said Mr Johannes Masenya, who is a senior librarian at the Yeoville Library.
He emphasised that the pre-schools must be registered with the Department of Education and the Department of Social Development.
Another programme is the Battle of the Books programme, which is aimed at grade six and seven pupils. The pupils will be given 15 books each to read.
“The local schools will compete in a local play-off, then a zonal play-off. The winners will compete in the semi-finals, which are regional,” said Mr Masenya.
He said the metropolitan finals will be held in July and August and the big final will be in October. The Family Literacy Programme will target 25 families in the community.
“The aim is to cultivate the culture of reading. We hope to encourage the parents of pupils in the hope that they will encourage pupils to read at home. We will have a number of workshops in order to support them. Parents are encouraged to be registered members of the library and we hope the pupils will follow this example,” said Mr Masenya.
The programme should be a fun activity for families and its impact will be evaluated at the end of the programme. “We also provide the community with free access to Wi-Fi and we receive about 300 users a month. Users are given a voucher that allows them up to three hours of internet access daily,” said Mr Masenya.
He said the programmes are intertwined to increase the circulation of books and information for the development of the community.
The Yeoville Library is situated on Raleigh Street and for more information, contact 011 487-1390.
