A number of Canadian radio personalities who were broadcasting programmes live from Ocho Rios and St Mary, courtesy of Sandals Resorts, recently took time out to conduct reading and physical education activities at two schools adopted by the Sandals Foundation.

The deejays, along with producers and technicians, were part of the three-week Canadian Winter Sizzle radio venture, featuring 37 Canadian stations at Sandals Grande Riviera and Jack FM from Vancouver, which was doing another event at Beaches Boscobel.

Trips to Seville Golden Pre and Boscobel Primary Schools were organised by the Sandals Foundation, as part of its Reading Road Trip, in association with Island Routes Adventure Tours — a project designed to make an intervention that will improve student opportunities for exposure to basic language arts skills.

The Reading Road Trip is a volunteer literacy enhancement programme available to Sandals and Beaches guests aimed at helping to improve reading skills of children attending some of the foundation’s adopted schools across the Caribbean.

Its mission is to provide children with an opportunity to improve their abilities in listening, comprehension and reading and extend the philanthropic work of the foundation through the educational focus of its mandate. It also affords guests an opportunity to give back while on vacation and offer them an experience to meet and improve the lives of local and Caribbean children.

The Reading Road Trip is a two-hour programme which sees volunteers assigned to small groups of children from each class at a ratio of approximately four to one. Volunteers read a short, fun story to the children and engage them in interactive questions to encourage active listening and comprehension.

They also engage students by asking them to illustrate parts of the story, have them partake in the reading and help them with their skills sheets. All material are supplied by the Sandals Foundation.

“This was the high point of my stay in Jamaica,” said William “Will” Percy, host of the popular Vancouver-based 96.5 Jack FM radio.

“I would take this experience of reading and sharing with the kids over going to Dunn’s River Falls any day,” added Percy, who passed on a fun trip to the world-famous attraction in order to read with the students.

He, along with wife Shannon and sons Aidan and Emerson, read books and helped in the programme for grade one students at Boscobel Primary.

“It was just incredible,” said seven-year-old Emerson, when asked about sharing educational experiences with children in his own age group.

“I had fun and I enjoyed reading with the students,” he said.

Howard Spittle, Beaches Boscobel’s general manager, also took part in the event. He noted that his resort and the foundation were always ready to give a helping hand to Jamaica’s education system.

Boscobel Primary’s grade one teacher Collette Dillon was pleased with the assistance given by her guests as well as the programme initiated by the Sandals Foundation.

“My students get a boost by having foreigners visit and read with them. It also allows them a chance to interact with persons from different cultures and experiences and gives them more self-confidence,” she said.