Sabah lawyer’s bit for rural kids
Published on: Wednesday, November 13, 2019
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah English Aspiration Society (Seas) aspires to create a reading culture among children in Sabah.
In line with this it has launched a SEAS Read Along Programme. Applying the relaxing, informal and friendly approach, it is already showing a good progress, it said in a statement.
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During the first session, there was lots of ice to break. The children were shy and was “not in the mood”. Gradually but surely, the smile started to lighten up their faces, hands went up and laughter and cheer filled up the SEAS English Corner.
SEAS Read Along Programme is led by lawyer Mazlianie Mohd Lan, from Membakut, who works and lives in Kuala Lumpur.
Mazlianie treasures her Sabahan root and heritage. She always wants to give back to the place where she started. She understands well the Sabahan local culture and its peculiarity.
Having studied in UK and built up her legal career in Kuala Lumpur, she feels she has something to give back to the society.
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When Mazlianie first met Dr. Zainab Kassim, the founding president of the Sabah English Aspiration Society (SEAS) in London in March, this year, the idea of Read Along Programme was initiated.
“The approach that we took for the SEAS Read Along programme was to read large sized story books to a group of small students in a comfortable setting of bean bags laid on mats on the floor.
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“This is to enable interaction and to create a comfortable safe environment with a relaxed and cozy ambience to engage the interest of the children in reading,” said Mazlianie.
She and her husband Ridhzuan Sapri, a captain at Malindo Air, with the guidance of SEAS Media Team also developed SEAS Reading Record which is a tool to assist the children in reading and understanding the contents of the story book.
Amazingly, during the second SEAS Read Along programme a student was able to retell the story as guided in the SEAS Reading Record, after the reading session was done.
Dr Zainab, the president of SEAS is positive that this good program will become widespread and the reading culture will become a trade mark for Sabah.
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