READING, it seems, has become a lost art in many parts of Jamaica but Aneta Lee of the Portmore Environment and Community Health Agency (PECHA) wants to bring it back.

And in bringing it back, she hopes it will have a positive effect on decreasing acts of crime and violence in the municipality and the rest of the country.

Basic school teacher Sandra Philibert collects books for her students' parents. (Photos: Kimone Thompson)

"We are encouraging persons to set up their home libraries because we're figuring that if we can do that, it will help to keep some of the children off the streets because they will be able to find something to read and so will not be idle," she said.

"We don't know what is happening with the crime. It just keeps getting worse and worse, and we don't know what is causing it, so we're also encouraging people to make Christmas gifts of the books. We are really just hoping to get parents and their children interested in reading," she said.

Lee spoke with the Observer last week on the Columbus Communications (FLOW) property in Newlands, Portmore where PECHA was hosting a one-day book distribution drive. Hundreds of people from Portmore, nearby Spanish Town and as far as from communities in Clarendon, streamed in throughout the day to select from a wide range of titles and subject areas. The books, which were donated by Food for the Poor, included novels, biographies, do-it-yourself manuals, medical journals, children's readers, cookbooks, as well as literature, history, mathematics and language texts. Items of stationery were also available.

"Under the school feeding programme, we assist in providing food and books to all the institutions in Portmore such as schools, churches, social clubs and individuals too," said Lee, who co-ordinates the school feeding programme.

One woman, who identified herself as Sandra Philibert, a teacher at Portsmouth Basic, was spotted piling books onto her arm.

"We're collecting them for the parents at our school. We got readers for the children about two months ago so these are for the parents. They can use them themselves or they can probably find things in them to help their children," she said.

An education officer assigned to the ministry's head office in Kingston was also among the crowd collecting books last week. She gave her name as Gloris Patterson and said she was collecting for early childhood institutions and resource centres.

"The material here caters for the development of teachers, parents and the children themselves," she said.

"Practitioners also use it to enhance their own scholastic ability. Further to that, some of them find useful information for their own children from early childhood up to the tertiary level, so people benefit," she said.

Since the start of the year, PECHA has had six book distribution drives, also courtesy of Food for the Poor.

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