The prize-giving ceremony of Reading Challenge 2018 was hosted at the British Council Fuller Road Office in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Reading Challenge is a programme coordinated by the Reading Agency UK that aims to encourage children to read more books. It is run in UK libraries in the summer holidays. British Council centers around the world run a modified version of the Challenge in their libraries and teaching centers and in local schools.
Every year the Reading Challenge has a different theme – this year it is ‘Animal Agents’. Participating centers receive collections of books on the theme along with high-quality graphics materials like posters, certificates, stickers, bookmarks, etc. The Challenge is supported by an interactive website with a range of children’s activities. The emphasis is on fun and enjoyment and the programme is very popular with children and parents.
This year around 100 children from different institutions participated in the challenge. Throughout the time, they took part in various interactive events hosted by the British Council Fuller Road office premises. The events included Halloween Party, Christmas Party, and International Children Film Festival.
All the participants along with their parents attended the event. The event started with the welcome speech by Sarwat Masuda Reza, Head of Cultural Centre. After that, there was an interactive storytelling session facilitated by a teacher from British Council Bangladesh teaching Centre. The children were excited to participate in it and enjoyed the session throughout.
“I would like to express my gratitude to British Council to organize such an excellent programme, ‘Reading Challenge’ for the Children. Participation by children will be helpful to their future career. I will appreciate if British Council extends their efforts to organize similar programmes in future also.” said Ruksana Shilu, Coordinator, Kakoli high School and College.
Lidika Rahman, a class 3 student who participated in the challenge said, “The challenge was really exciting, as I have to finish 6 books in a short period of time, but still I enjoyed it a lot as the books were really good. And as I have selected them of my own so it was more fun to read them. I want to participate in it again.”
The prize-giving ceremony ended with the distribution of certificates and medals to the children who completed the reading challenge. The children were extremely happy after receiving their prizes and were excited to attend the event.
