The Holy Innocents Primary School has a new library.
Through sponsorship from CIBC FirstCaribbean, children at the Ayshford, St Thomas school now have a beautifully decorated haven for reading.
Principal Marvaline Chadderton explained that after their old library was overrun by “wood worms”, the pupils’ main access to story books was through the National Library Service’s Schools’ Mobile Library, so she reached out to corporate Barbados for help.
“We got a sponsor to help us to refurbish it. We got some metal book shelves,
and we decided to make it attractive by decorating the room to give the children the incentive of wanting to come into this room to read, and so it has achieved its purpose,” she said.
The library was opened on World Book Day, which was observed on Tuesday, April 23, this year. It boasts a cosy reading area where children can sit on soft cushions under a mural tree with 3-D leaves.
Students engrossed in their books. (GP)
“The children are all excited about it…and they just love the atmosphere. We want to encourage children to read more because we find in this day of technology, children are gravitating more towards the laptops, the smart phones, the tablets and they are refusing to take up the actual books to turn pages.
“We want them to be able to sit with a book and to be engrossed in reading and gaining knowledge through reading. This is what we are hoping to achieve,” Chadderton emphasised.
Some members of the Personal Credit Services Team who worked tirelessly to give the Holy Innocent Primary School library a new look. From left are: Denella Howell, Kay Cutting (Associate Director PCS), Michelle Giles, Stephanie Holford, Celia Walcott, Anthony Moore and Pauline Jean-Baptiste. (GP)
The team from CIBC FirstCaribbean’s Personal Credit Services (PCS) scrubbed, sanded, painted and stencilled until the school’s library sparkled with the beauty akin to the outdoors. The team also sourced books and other educational materials and categorised them by age before stocking the library shelves.
Retail Credit Manager Kay Cutting described it as “seven months of continuous planning, strategising, weekend shopping trips and … weekends working at the school to prepare the room”.
Cutting said her team had hoped “to design and create an oasis of wonder, a space where children would be excited to be in… where the desire for reading and seeking out new adventures through the stories and activities would be encouraged.”
Over a number of weeks collection bins were set up at strategic areas at the bank’s Head Office in Warrens and scores of employees donated a range of new and used books for the project. (PR/SAT)
