Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Stu­art Young MP, is ex­pect­ed to treat sev­er­al young­sters from his con­stituen­cy of Port of Spain North/St Ann’s West to sto­ry-time, this Fri­day, Ju­ly 12, at the 2022 edi­tion of the Book Bud­dies Hol­i­day Read­ing Camp, cur­rent­ly un­der­way in the Sem­i­nar Room, 1st Floor, NALIS, on Aber­crom­by Street, Port of Spain.

Min­is­ter Young will take on the role of ‘sto­ry­teller’ when he vis­its the campers at 11:30 am on Fri­day, along with NALIS’ Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Paula Greene, an of­fi­cial state­ment from NALIS said.

The PoS North/St Ann’s West MP has fund­ed the Read­ing Camp since 2017 ex­clu­sive­ly for chil­dren from his con­stituen­cy.

“To­mor­row, the Min­is­ter will kick off a brief read­ing ses­sion with Camp par­tic­i­pants with an ex­cerpt from the book on which the Camp’s read­ing seg­ment is cen­tred,” NALIS said. 

NALIS notes that Min­is­ter Young felt the need to con­tin­ue fund­ing the camp es­pe­cial­ly giv­en two years of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and its im­pact “on the aca­d­e­m­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment of our na­tion’s chil­dren”, and his “strong con­vic­tion for the in­valu­able role that read­ing plays in the de­vel­op­ment of young minds”.

The two-week Camp, which be­gan on Au­gust 8, is fa­cil­i­tat­ed by ex­pert Read­ing Coach­es from lo­cal read­ing ad­vo­cate group Book Bud­dies TnT, NALIS ex­plained.  Book Bud­dies is a pro­gramme that seeks to spread the pow­er of read­ing amongst chil­dren six to 15 years. 

For the two-week Camp, the group's fo­cus is on in­still­ing the joy and plea­sure of read­ing in its par­tic­i­pants. Its ef­fort is be­ing sup­port­ed by NALIS and its Chil­dren’s Li­brary team with fun-filled mind stim­u­la­tion games, sto­ry­telling and craft.