Swedish company presents $15,322 to Graphic to help supply Junior Graphic to schools

Price and Pierce Corporation, a Swedish paper producing company, has presented a cheque for $15,322 to the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL) for a year’s supply of copies of the Junior Graphic to selected deprived schools throughout the country.

The exercise is to help improve reading among children.

Beneficiary schools are those with pupils who cannot buy the paper. The supplied copies are, therefore, put in the school library to enable as many pupils as possible to read them.

In a brief speech, Mr Matti Melin, the Senior Vice President of Price and Pierce, who handed over the cheque, said education was a basic right that every child had to enjoy.

He said the corporation was, therefore, committed to ensuring that children, no matter where they lived in the country, had access to reading materials.

The GCGL’s intervention

For his part, the Managing Director of the GCGL, Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, said the company had, since 1950, introduced various interventions to encourage children at the basic level of education to take reading seriously, since that was the surest way of unearthing their potential.

He said one good example of the measures was the launch of the Junior Graphic, on the company’s 50th anniversary, to increase access to literary materials for children and to also help nurture the reading habit in them.

Mr Ashigbey said the company, with support from Price and Pierce, last year distributed free copies of the newspaper to 64 schools throughout the country.

The Junior Graphic, he said, was used by some schools as an instructional guide and teaching aid, stressing that “the feedback we have received from some of the beneficiary schools is very positive and we are committed to increasing access to literary materials across the country”.

He told the donor that the GCGL, as a corporate social responsibility, had subsidised the cost of the Junior Graphic to make it affordable for children.

Mr Ashigbey commended Price and Pierce for its contribution to the improvement of education in Ghana.

Junior Graphic Editor

The Editor of Junior Graphic, Mrs Mavis Kitcher, expressed gratitude for the donation and said the support would give many children in poor and deprived communities access to the paper.

She said the team that worked on the paper was committed to ensuring that it positively affected the schoolwork of pupils.