Our EduLit service team have worked in collaboration with the Tease community in Ghana to launch their first storybook in a series titled Kwame’s Adventures.
The key aim of this project was to enable Ghanaian children to see their communities represented in fiction. This particular story is based in Tease, one of the EduSpots communities in the Afram Plains area of the Eastern Region of Ghana. The illustrations were created by a Ghanaian illustrator, Fleance Forkuo, who based the pictures upon images from the community.
The main character, Kwame the bird, visits communities across Ghana, meeting locals and embracing their culture. In order to be able to do this, students from EduLit sent each community a survey to learn about all the qualities that make their community special and unique, for instance, the Mmoaninko Festival in Abofour. The community also inputted into the story’s narrative at multiple stages in the process. By collaborating to create a series of books with characters and events the students could relate to, it is hoped that these stories will increase their interest in reading more widely.
In response to the first book in the series, Justina, aged 14, from the Tease community says:
‘It is amazing to have a book written about my community. I find the most interesting point is where Esi cries about losing her science book. It shows us that she is serious about her studies and encourages us young readers to be serious too, in order to reach our aims and goals in life to become reasonable future leaders.’
Huge well done to the EduLit team and thank you to all those at EduSpots and in the Tease community who have contributed to this project.
