NGO wins award for helping kids read

The Olinga Foundation for Human Development (OFHD), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Ghana, has won an international award for helping primary school pupils to learn how to read.

The All Children Reading Award, sponsored by USAID, World Vision, and Australia Aid, will also enable the NGO to have access to a fund to support 48,000 children have access to literacy methods and train teachers within two years.

The targeted districts of the OFHD are the Afram Plains, Suhum Ayensuano, in the Eastern Region, and the Wassa Amenfi West and Mpohor Wassa East in the Western Region of Ghana.

Shedding more light on the honour, Dr Leslie Casely-Hayford, Director of the Foundation, told GNA that the All Children Reading Award was a competition involving about 450 non-profit organisations globally that could demonstrate innovation, efficiency, and cost effectiveness in their literacy approaches, to help children learn to read among the target populations the organisations worked with.

She said the Olinga Foundation was among the 32 finalists that won the award, which was presented on the 8th September, 2012 , at the Ronald Reagan Conference Centre in Washington DC, United States of America.

Dr Casely-Hayford, said the Foundation had been implementing a large scale literacy campaign for children at the upper primary school level over the last 15 years in Ghana.

She explained that the NGO would work closely with the District Education Offices and maintain a cost-sharing approach to ensure that District Assemblies sustain the literacy programmes after the grant is completed at the end of the second year.