In 2019, I studied at QUT under the Australia Awards Early Childhood Development Program. The knowledge and skills I acquired from this training had empowered me to not only advance in my specialty area, as a nurse, but expand my ability to identify and cater to the needs of my community.
With the current COVID19 situation, schools have been disrupted and children have been missing out on many lessons. In response to this, I started a small project to gather and distribute books for four elementary schools and one primary school in my community. I collected 70 boxes full of books for the children, with donations even coming from Queensland, Australia. This has been the first initiative of its kind in my community, which also led to many other opportunities: students improved their English speaking skills despite the COVID-19 lockdown; efforts to complete the building of school libraries have been made; different schools took turns in using the library and fostered a good relationship; and a fence was finally built around school areas to protect students and properties.
Our target was to make sure 50% of the students read a book each day but this had exceeded to 80%- a great news and sign that students are really keen on learning through reading.
