Through this program, we also encourage a reading culture among the young people by providing them with non-curriculum books, workbooks and writing material for use in their personal libraries at home.
To boast the reading culture, RAYD is partnering with renowned writers and locally-based publishing companies to organise a story writing competition for rural pupils and students. The best ten stories shall be published in a book and sold to the public. Proceeds shall be used to pay royalties to the authors, and to continue to finance the project.
We also fill the teaching gap by encouraging youths to volunteer to teach in schools in their communities. There is an endemic shortage of teachers in schools located in rural areas; more than half of the teachers assigned to these schools don’t always take up duties. RAYD plans to enter into partnership with the government ministries concern in order to monitor and ensure that teachers assigned to the rural areas actually take up duty and work.