Grow with books: Porte port boro hoi - A bilingual reading initiative for primary and secondary school children from public access library

Abstract

Bangladesh Shishu (Children) Academy (BSA) is a unique organization for children development in Bangladesh. Academy took an initiative with British Council (BC) the bilingual reading program. Both the organization engages good number of young starts in reading multicultural story books. Recently it is noticeable that the young leaners are less encouraged to read books. They are more engaged with electronic devises. Engaging them in reading books, especially to give them opportunity to develop language proficiency through reading story books, is very important not only for their benefit, but also to have better engagement with the library point of view. Research shows that reading helps in vocabulary expansion, improves memory and cognitive skills and promotes stronger analytical and thinking skills. Also, reading is fun – and it is one of the useful ways of learning a language by developing four main core skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening among young learners. This project is a program for students of primary and secondary level for developing their reading habit both in Bengali (native language) and English. The program has run in 64 district libraries of Bangladesh Shishu (Children) Academy.