A final-year student at the University of the West Indies’ Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication is tackling illiteracy head-on in the heart of Western Kingston.

Last week at the Denham Town Primary School, Heather Quest and members of her ‘Fighting Illiteracy in (Western) Kingston Schools (FIKS It) team launched the FIKS It campaign as a first step to effect a turnaround of the 28 per cent illiteracy rate among students of the school.

The project is backed by at least eight sponsors, who are putting up a total of $1.5 million to fund phase one of the project. This involves the construction of a reading and resource centre – equipped with computers, video equipment, a wide assortment of books and reading-help kits – housed in a 40-foot container, at a location to be decided on. Two reading specialists will man the centre.

At the same time, the committee members are now galvanising support from teachers in the area to help parents to read as well.

“The project management team is now in the process of planning an outreach programme because we have now found that the parents, some of them, cannot help their children because they themselves cannot read,” Quest told the Observer. “So far we have received 60 signatories from parents who are interested in joining the outreach programme.”

She had chosen the illiteracy project towards completing her degree in Mass Communications, she explained, because of the need at the school.

“Twenty-eight per cent can’t read, but at the same time, over 40 per cent of them are not functionally literate, which means they are not reading at their grade level,” Quest explained.

She said the team was using a variety of communications campaign materials, such as posters and brochures, to sensitise the community and the children about the illiteracy problem.

Phases two and three will see a similar programme being implemented in about seven other schools in Kingston, over the next 10 years, she said.