Nurturing a culture of reading one book at a time
YESS was born as after school programme with a holistic approach to educating, assisting and tutoring youth.
WENTWORTH’s Youth Education Support Services (YESS) programme was once again blessed by the women of the Not Just for Bookworms Book Club, on Saturday, 3 August, with a worthy donation in their continuous efforts to foster a culture of reading and break the mental shackles holding back the youth.
The members of the book club had initially donated a number of books to YESS at their launch in March, and further pledged to raise funds and buy more books needed to assist in keeping the programme alive. Fast forward four months later, the dedicated women, showered the YESS team with educational books as well as a cheque of R20 000.
Chairperson of the book club, Mpume Mbambo, said the funds raised to make this contribution possible, was from the membership fees gathered from the book club.
READ: Newly launched club unites bookworms
“As a book club, it’s not just about enriching our own love for reading, but it also about us investing in young people and imparting that culture and knowledge to the next generation. It is important to us to nurture literature and education. Supporting YESS is our way of giving back and realising our vision to educate and empower the youth in the community. The members from YESS presented us with a list of books they needed and we bought and presented them with the books, to help them carry on with the invaluable work that they do,” she said.
“We are ever so grateful to the Not Just for Bookworms Book Club for their generous donation that went above and beyond our expectations, all in just four months. We will put the books and money to good use and continue to inspire reading in our youth as a hobby and gateway to their success,” said YESS chairperson, Linda James.
Having noticed that children were struggling to reach their full potential in school, Linda, together with other members of the community, started the YESS programme as an extra lessons learning component, specifically focusing on maths.
READ: Getting to know the man behind Blue Roof
“We soon realised that there was a deeper problem, in that our children struggled to read. Children were being pushed through the system with certain learning challenges being identified. As a result, learners have poor academic results and others drop out of school, and aren’t able to access opportunities,” said Linda. It was this realisation and the lack of supervision of many young school children after school, that YESS was born as after school programme with a holistic approach to educating, assisting and tutoring youth. The programme is currently run at the Blue Roof Life Space. For more information contact Linda James on 076-336-4382.
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