Reading Spots Ghana, a UK registered charity organization aimed at creating community-led sustainable libraries in rural Ghana through global citizenship has held its first ever reading conference in Techiman in the Brong Ahafo Region.

The project brought together 63 delegates from 16 communities stretching across seven regions of the country.

Delegates were drawn from Abofour, Akumadan, Tamale, Elmina, Asemkow, Tema, Donkokrom, Tease, Bosomdwe, Agona Swedru, Bolgatanga and Ekumfi.

The conference was an attempt by Reading Spots Ghana to bring together volunteers across the country to identify innovative ways of encouraging reading among school-going children, especially in rural communities.

Majority of the day's sessions were led by volunteers from various communities with a focus on improving community engagement and ways of creating strong reading communities.

Guest speaker at the conference Nana Awere Damoah who spoke on the Topic; 'The hills and the city: building Ghana readers' lauded the project. 

He added "I was touched by stories from Tease where two brothers, artisans, donated their services as carpenter and mason, to build a community library with so little money you would be ashamed to hear".

Nana Damoah commended the organisation for the initiative to construct community-led education centres or libraries free for all to use with the basic aim of improving reading among children in the rural setting.

In 2015, a study conducted on early grade reading and mathematics EGRA/EMGA in Ghana revealed that about 90% of pupils in basic schools cannot read or understand what they read. 

The study revealed that 50.7% of a sampled 7,923 pupils across the country cannot read at all while 43.8% could read a few words without understanding them. The situation is even worse amongst pupils in rural communities.

It was however revealed that the absence of adequate teaching and learning materials contributed largely to these large percentage of pupils' inability to read. 

Reading Spots has therefore taken a major step towards improving reading among pupils by establishing 18 community libraries.

The project was created by Catherine Davison in response to the complete lack of reading materials in Ghanaian communities, especially in remote areas.