PHILIPSBURG:--- The Beyond Kultura Events Foundation (BKE) will embark within weeks on its STORYTELLING-READING-EXPRESSIONS Program, thanks to the commitment of financial support from the Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund Caribbean and the Collaborative Funds.
President of the BKE, Loekie Morales is very happy with the enormous support of these Funding agencies. In the meantime, BKE has also gotten the confirmation of the ‘Nederlandse Taal Unie’, that this Dutch Literacy Funding Agency too considers this a very educational program for all involved in it on Sint Maarten.
Morales: ‘Finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel, in convincing the sponsors about the importance of such program for our community. Listening and Reading are fundamental skills for comprehending text and understanding stories. It all starts with enhancing reading and listening skills of our children at a young age’.
Some years ago Beyond Kultura has developed this Storytelling-Reading program with in first instance as beneficiaries, children from 3 to 13 years old, to enhance their reading skills and giving them fun in reading and listening to stories. Our program helps children and at the same time give adults, our next beneficiaries, the skills needed in Storytelling and Reading for children.’
Storytelling and story reading workshops
Parents and great parents, uncles, aunts and adult neighbors who love to read or tell stories are the next beneficiaries, who can participate in a workshop and get training in reading, to read properly for children, and get them to love reading. Those ones who like storytelling, will get a training in how to develop and tell a story in a captivating way. Each module, the Storytelling/Expression training and the Story reading training will be captured in at least a 10 hours’ workshop. The participants will get the basic techniques of the puppet show as material example. After the training, they will have to read and/or tell story to children for 10 weeks at the Jubilee Library and 5 times at Community Centers or Afternoon School Programs. At the end of the program, they will get a certificate ‘Introduction Reading or/and Storytelling’ for the part they have fulfilled. Part of the training will also be to show their organizing talents and children coaching skills in organizing the ‘Kids Night Out’ of 2019. Ten to a maximum of 15 adults are able to participate in each program.
BKE will start first with the Storytelling module in the second week of January 2018, the Story reading module will start most probably in the beginning of March 2019, but the recruiting of the storytellers and readers starts now, until 1 December.
While the training/workshops for story readers and tellers will be mainly in English, children will get storytelling and Readings in English, Dutch and for Spanish speaking children, in Spanish.
The Philipsburg Jubilee Library, the USM, 3 Afternoon school programs and 3 Community Centers will be approached by BKE for this program.
If you as adult, 18 years and older, want to participate to the training/workshop, you can contact the Beyond Kultura Events Foundation for more details at 5271223. The registration fee for the course/per module, for each participant is $100,00. Children can participate for free. Parents of children who want to participate in the Storytelling or the Story reading program, can subscribe their children at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
