By Elena Paleo, Nicaragua Portfolio Advisor
By sponsoring a child in Nicaragua, you are helping children from impoverished families have greater opportunities to overcome poverty. As Portfolio Advisor for Nicaragua at World Vision Australia, I would like to share with you Maryel’s story. Like your sponsored child, she is an example of how you are changing lives through Child Sponsorship.
Maryel is a 10-year-old girl living in a small community outside Managua, the capital city. During her first years at school she struggled to read and write, and this had an impact on her school performance. Her parents, Miguel and Jasmina, worried about her. Despite their scarce resources, her father bought her some books to see if she could improve. But she continued to have difficulties.
Thanks to child sponsors like you, World Vision has been working with community members, local partners and authorities to improve the wellbeing of children. One of the projects we have been implementing in collaboration with local schools and the Ministry of Education is an initiative aiming to improve reading and comprehension skills of children living in impoverished communities, such as Maryel’s.
The initiative provides schools with reading materials and helps school teachers learn methodologies which encourage and improve students’ reading abilities, such as “I read, comment, imagine and create”; “By playing, talking and drawing, we learn to read”; and “Venturing into the pleasure of reading”.
These are child-friendly methodologies which strengthen children’s pronunciation and word recognition. They also build vocabulary and reading comprehension. They use creative, playful and interactive techniques, such as drawing, group discussions and storytelling. Children overcome their limitations and fear to read progressively and become more confident and interested in reading.