Police, media pool resources to pump up literacy

BY WENDY ELLIOTT

welliott@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

The Kings County Advertiser and Kings County Register, representing Transcontinental Media, along with Kings RCMP were among the recipients of this year’s Wal-Mart Adopt-a-Library Literacy Appreciation Award.

Presentations to Trancontinental representative Ray Savage, Cst. Greg Byrne and Cst. Les Kakonyi took place recently at a reception in New Glasgow. Transcontinental contributed copies of its magazine, The Hockey News, to schools, while Kakonyi said the RCMP have been actively involved in the program for approximately nine years.

The Adopt-a-Library Literacy program rewards and encourages children to read. The Kings County school recipient this year was St. Mary's Elementary in Aylesford, which had the highest number of students who read books in the reading challenge.

Students in Aylesford read an average of 76 books each. They were followed closely by students at Aldershot Elementary School.

New Glasgow-based RCMP Cst. John Kennedy, who is provincial coordinator of the Adopt-a-Library Literacy program, views literacy as a sport.

“The more you read,” he says, “the better you get at it.”

The campaign to improve literacy rates, he said, comes from the police belief that “low literacy levels are connected to youth at high risk of committing crime. Illiteracy also traps youth.”

Individuals with limited literacy skills have fewer options in life. According to Kennedy, “it’s better to see them in libraries now than in trouble with the law later.” Statistics show that 65 per cent of prison inmates are illiterate, have learning disabilities or have trouble reading.

The initiative involves a partnership between libraries, the RCMP and police agencies to encourage schools and students to embrace literacy.

The program strongly connects literacy and crime prevention by giving young people the skills and tools to steer them away from criminal activity. The program’s slogan is ‘Fighting Crime One Book at a Time.’

This year, 80 schools in four countries participated in the challenge over five months. Students read almost 1.1 million books.

“It just blows your mind,” Kennedy said. “The kids are buying into it. This is all about making reading fun and getting the kids to participate in a brand new sport.”

Last fall, the literacy program benefited when the Acadia hockey Axemen and the RCMP Wolfpack played a game in Wolfville.