BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

Do you re­mem­ber what it felt like be­ing read to by your par­ents or old­er sib­ling, as they got ready to tuck you in­to bed at night? Well, that feel­ing of safe­ty and warmth is what SAP Ter­ri­to­ry Man­ag­er Ele­na Dy­er and Soft­ware and Web Con­tent Man­age­ment Ar­chi­tect, Kevin Blake Thomas want­ed to do for the chil­dren of Trinidad and To­ba­go when they de­cid­ed to cre­ate the vir­tu­al Read 2 Me plat­form— a new ser­vice which pro­vides free nar­ra­tions of lo­cal books for small chil­dren and teens with the mis­sion state­ment— “As long as schools are closed, we’ll be tuck­ing the na­tion's chil­dren to bed!”

In a time of wor­ry, fear, and un­cer­tain­ty brought on by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Dy­er told Guardian Me­dia the main fo­cus of the project was to give chil­dren while they were out of school that feel­ing of nor­mal­cy by just giv­ing them 30 min­utes every day of fun, ed­u­ca­tion­al and in­ter­ac­tive sto­ries that would take their mind off of the doom and gloom they have been con­stant­ly hear­ing about the pan­dem­ic.

“We re­alised that anx­i­ety ex­ist­ed and we’re all fa­mil­iar with it in adults, but then we re­alised if we are strug­gling to deal with COVID-19 and the un­known, kids were prob­a­bly in a mess as well,” Dy­er ex­plained.

The Read 2 Me ser­vice pre­miered on March 26 and is aired night­ly on In­sta­gram (IG) Live from 8 pm to 8.30 pm from its read­er’s IG live. Each episode is then post­ed to the Read 2 Me of­fi­cial IG page (@read2me_tt) as well as Face­book, for chil­dren who would have missed the live episode.

Since its de­but, Dy­er boast­ed, yes­ter­day, it reached its 50th episode.

With the idea birthed on March 23, and its pre­mier hap­pen­ing just three days lat­er, Dy­er said there was lit­tle time to find a read­i­ly avail­able read­ing cast, hence she and Thomas called up­on friends who were im­me­di­ate­ly will­ing to sup­port and par­tic­i­pate.

From vet­er­an mas man Pe­ter Min­shall to Free Town Col­lec­tive’s Muham­mad Muwak­il, to mul­ti­fac­eted en­ter­tain­er Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la and even Guardian Me­dia’s Lead Ed­i­tor of In­ves­ti­ga­tion Mark Bas­sant, chil­dren were tucked in­to bed by these voic­es and faces they may have oth­er­wise not known.

Dy­er said be­yond friends, as the Read 2 Me plat­form grew, many vol­un­teer read­ers came for­ward ren­der­ing their ser­vice.

She said the feed­back has been phe­nom­e­nal with view­er­ship reach­ing 2000 at times on just one episode.

But the vir­tu­al ven­ture does not on­ly ben­e­fit the needs of chil­dren. It has al­so cre­at­ed an av­enue for the rev­e­la­tion of lo­cal and re­gion­al lit­er­a­ture and their pro­lif­ic writ­ers.

Dy­er ex­plained, she and Thomas found it would have al­so been a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case lo­cal and re­gion­al sto­ries.

“You’re not go­ing to get here Mo­by Dick or Char­lie and the choco­late fac­to­ry or any­thing like that,” she laughed jok­ing­ly.

She said they reached out to lo­cal books stores and pur­chased a few books at first, but when the na­tion­al shut down hap­pened, at­tain­ing phys­i­cal books be­came a chal­lenge. How­ev­er as luck would have it, Dy­er said out of nowhere came au­thors of­fer­ing their books and they even got great as­sis­tance from the Bo­cas Lit Fest with the sub­mis­sion of its cat­a­log.

“Folks through­out the di­as­po­ra just checked in and do­nat­ed a book. So we got the e-ver­sion of books, which is not nor­mal be­cause it’s usu­al­ly some­thing that is paid for,” Dy­er added.

She not­ed some of the books were so good, it was un­for­tu­nate not many peo­ple knew they even ex­ist­ed. She added, so in­ter­est­ing was the lit­er­ary con­tent, that par­ents have now been ask­ing where and how they could pur­chase these books.

Asked if she and Thomas planned on tak­ing the Read 2 Me plat­form be­yond the school clo­sure, Dy­er said the pos­si­bil­i­ty did in­deed ex­ist but re­it­er­at­ed the con­tem­po­rary fo­cus, how­ev­er, re­mained on that 30 min­utes every day that chil­dren don’t have to hear about the doom and gloom of COVID-19.

“We are push­ing through un­til that day, they put back on their uni­forms and head back out.”