Kali­fa Clyne

ANSA McAL Chem­i­cals, in part­ner­ship with Al­stons Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (AM­CO), has do­nat­ed $30,000 to cov­er the bud­get for a pro­gramme aimed at en­hanc­ing the lit­er­a­cy skills of stu­dents of St Joseph's Col­lege, St Joseph.The cheque was pre­sent­ed yes­ter­day at the school com­pound in front of an ap­pre­cia­tive stu­dent body.The com­pa­ny's mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, Robert Mo­hammed, de­scribed il­lit­er­a­cy as a ma­jor prob­lem which faced not on­ly stu­dents but al­so the en­tire coun­try.He said the best way to tack­le the lit­er­a­cy prob­lem was to screen stu­dents and fo­cus re­sources on aid­ing those who need­ed ad­di­tion­al tu­tor­ing.He said that was the rea­son why ANSA McAL Chem­i­cals and AM­CO had de­cid­ed to take up the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of sup­port­ing the col­lege with its pro­gramme.

Prin­ci­pal Hazel Haynes said the school was com­mit­ted to de­tect­ing the caus­es of stu­dents' learn­ing prob­lems and ad­dress­ing them.She said she ap­proached the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA) and re­quest­ed as­sis­tance.She said she felt AL­TA had the abil­i­ty and hu­man re­sources need­ed to as­sist stu­dents with their lan­guage skills.AL­TA, she not­ed, ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge to be part of the event.How­ev­er, Haynes said she was asked to seek spon­sor­ship to help pro­vide course ma­te­ri­als for the pro­gramme.She said ANSA McAL Chem­i­cals and AM­CO did not hes­i­tate to fill the school's need.

The com­pa­nies have even tak­en it a step fur­ther and have ini­ti­at­ed a pro­mo­tion where­by a por­tion of sales from ANSA McAL Chem­i­cals Lim­it­ed's prod­uct, Clean and White Bleach, would be do­nat­ed to lit­er­a­cy pro­grammes in schools.Stu­dents said they were in supp­port of the pro­gramme. Some said there were sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in their spelling, read­ing and pro­nun­ci­a­tion skills and al­so saw an im­prove­ment in their grades for most of their sub­jects.Adri­an Pierre, a Form Four stu­dent, said though he felt he could speak well, he had nev­er re­al­ly un­der­stood the ba­sic foun­da­tion of gram­mar.He said he felt more con­fi­dent about his read­ing and gram­mar skills since he en­tered the pro­gramme.