Maddam Esther Cobbah, Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Communication (Stratcomm) Africa Limited, a private communications company, on Friday stressed the need to inculcate the culture of reading in the young ones to eradicate illiteracy. “Poor communication often creates misunderstanding and may even lead to conflict in the society,” she said at the launch of Stratcomm Africa’s reading and writing project at Kanda in Accra to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the company. It is under the theme: “Raising the Bar: Read Better; Write Better; Communicate Better.” Participants on the four-week reading and writing project comprise pupils from the Kanda cluster of Junior High Schools who would be monitored by resource persons from Stratcomm. Ms Cobbah said one was likely to identify mistakes in spelling, grammar and incomplete sentences, including unclear expressions, in many documents in Ghana such as papers, brochures, leaflets or written materials, adding that even on radio some of these mistakes were prevalent. She said cultivating the reading habit could help overcome these shortcomings as everybody had something to gain from improved communication skills. “Our aim is to promote understanding among Ghanaians through effective information sharing particularly in relation to information about national policies and programmes,” Ms Cobbah said. “We may even be sometimes frustrated with ourselves when we are not able to express clearly how we feel about something,” she added. She advised pupils to read more to enhance their command of language saying “this will increase your confidence level leading to improvement in one’s language”. Ms Cobbah noted that those who could not have the opportunity to learn how to read were usually those who were determined to make their children learn to be well educated. Nana Oye Lithur, a lawyer and human rights advocate, sharing her childhood experience with the children, said because of reading, the library was the joy of her life. She told the pupils to be ambassadors of reading in their schools before and after the four-week programme. “Let’s read and become good adults and serve our nation,” she advised the pupils. Ebenezer Tetteh, operations manager of Stratcomm, said reading must evolve out of fun and called on the teachers to assist the programme to succeed. “To Whet Pupil to Read”, a drama, was staged in which characters that read were rewarded and those who failed to read were condemned. Nana Oye and Mr Ken Ofori Atta, Executive Chairman of the Data Bank, read excerpts from their favourite childhood books to reinforce the importance of reading well, writing well and communicating well to the children. Source: GNA