DEAR Day!

DEAR Day stands for Drop Everything and Read Day in Uganda! It's an annual event Peace Corps initiated last year in partnership with the Ugandan Ministry of Education and Sports. The idea is that in the whole country, at 11AM, everyone stops what they are doing and reads for at least 20 minutes. We want to encourage reading culture but at the same time not punish people who are not used to reading for long periods of time. This is especially helpful for primary schools where I'm sure if we asked them to read for an hour or so, things might get a little restless. 

DEAR Day was on March 5, and so many schools and organizations participated! Not just education Volunteers either.

At my college, we organized time for the tutors and staff, but the schedule was such that we didn't have the right amount of materials for the students, and the timing was not so good. But enjoy pictures of my staff reading!

One of my librarians! He is actually reading a PC book about libraries.

People love the newspaper here.

Even more when the newspaper is in your language.

One of the secretaries in the office specifically requested Things Fall Apart. Chinua Achebe is pretty popular around here.

Some tutors read on the veranda by the staffroom.

My PES (Professional Education Studies) tutor reading Teach Like a Champion, one of the books we used in our PC teacher training.

My Language tutor also reading Things Fall Apart, which is probably apt as this book was printed in the morning.

My counterpart, the Deputy Principal of Pre-Service, reading the news.

Another secretary in the administrative block.

What a beautiful day for literacy.

I loaned out a copy of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and this tutor said he really likes it! He asked to borrow it to keep reading.

For the support staff, including cooks, workmen, guards, drivers, etc., we did Read-Alouds with some Big Books that I got from Peace Corps. This was helpful because for some of them, English is not a very comfortable language. My Language tutor translated while we read.