Ghana Gas unveils ‘Turn a Page’ project for schoolchildren

The Ghana National Gas Company has announced a reading project dubbed “Turn a Page.”

Head of corporate communications at Ghana Gas, Ernest Owusu Bempah who made the announcement in Takoradi on Monday said the project will target twenty-seven to thirty thousand pupils from thirty basic schools in the Ellembelle District.

The turn a page is a literacy project which aims to inculcate reading habit among school children between the ages of 6 to 15 years.

He said the project has become necessary following a research conducted by Ghana Education Service (GES) in 2012 which suggested that only 2% of children in primary two (2) can read proficiently while 50 percent of the pupils assessed could not pronounce a single English or Ghanaian word correctly, 44 percent could read without understanding what they read, 4 percent could read with some understanding.

He said only 35 percent of basic school children are proficient in reading.

The project aims to close this gap and aligned with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 4.

“As a company we are worried that most of the school-going children especially at the basic level are unable to read well, spell words correctly, we want to see a literate community that can fill up more influential positions at Ghana Gas in the future," he stressed.

He said prior to the conception of Turn a Page project, Ghana Gas has undertaken several educational projects; construction of a 4-unit teachers’ quarters at Anokye, Asemnda Suazo, an ultra-modern nursery facility in Asemnda Suazo, donation of educational materials to the Nzulezu Primary School by the Corporate Communication department which worth several thousand Ghana cedis etc.

Mr. Owusu Bempah added that Ghana Gas is implementing social investment project across the sixteen (16) regions in Ghana of which majority of the projects focus on improvement in basic education which complement the key objective of Turn a Page.

“At the end of the project, we intend to provide 15,000 reading materials school children, 95% improvement in reading, comprehension, vocabulary and writing, 50% improvement in the performance of BECE in the long term and provide training for 50 teachers on how to implement effective literacy in the selected schools,” he indicated.