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Despite the challenges of COVID-19 that prevented direct engagement with students, promoting literacy remains a priority for De Beers Group. The Books in Homes program, which is now in its 17th year, topped CAD$1 million as the company rolled out its largest-ever literacy program in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
Founded in 2003, Books in Homes provides books free of charge to youth attending schools in primarily Indigenous communities near our NWT operations. To date, more than 60,000 books have been handed out, including 10,760 distributed to 17 schools during the past two weeks, the largest number of books and most schools in a single year since the program began.
Literacy development is a key component of the De Beers Group Building Forever initiative Partnering for Thriving Communities, announced on November 30.
(See OUR BUILDING FOREVER GOALS)
The investment includes the cost to purchase books and transport them to communities, including Behchoko, Whati, Wekweeti, Gameti, Dettah, Ndilo, Lutsel K’e, and Fort Resolution. At its outset the program focused on isolated Indigenous communities in order to fill a pressing literacy gap, and it has been expanded to incorporate other communities during the past few years, including Fort Smith in 2019 and Hay River in 2018.
This year, the program includes books being provided to students attending seven Yellowknife schools and Chief Sunrise Education Centre on the K’atl’odeeche First Nation.
“Enhancing literacy and numeracy skills is a key element within our Building Forever strategy. The enhancement of the program this year enabled us to include the elementary schools in Yellowknife as well as the remote communities. The inclusion of activity kits that promoted science, math and engineering was a great addition and will hopefully inspire students to pursue future roles in this area. We are thrilled to be able to continue the program this year and really appreciate the support from the school staff to make it happen while maintaining COVID protocols,” explained Kelly Brenton, De Beers Group Social Performance Manager for the NWT.
De Beers Group thanks Epiroc and National Bank of Canada who both made financial contributions toward the program, Det’on Cho Logistics for providing warehouse space for sorting the books, and to Acasta Heliflight and Air Tindi for their help in delivering books to community schools.
Any books not selected by students will be placed into each school’s library.