ATLANTIS, Paradise Island has taken its commitment to help eradicate illiteracy in The Bahamas a step further with its Atlantis Against Illiteracy campaign.

It comes as millions of school-aged children the world-over join with the US-based Jumpstart Organisation’s Read for the Record programme, where for one day each year, teachers, parents and anyone wanting to get involved are encouraged to read an assigned book to a group or classroom of children.

Last year, over 2.3 million children around the world had the book ‘Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad’ by David Soman, read to them.

At that point the Atlantis Against Illiteracy programme was created and Atlantis arranged for a guest narrator to read the book to 323 local schoolchildren in the Atlantis Theatre. “This year we decided to take our efforts directly to the schools in the community in hopes of getting more narrators and children involved,” said organiser and Atlantis Librarian Stephanie Davis.

In addition to reading this year’s book, ‘Otis by Loren Long’ Atlantis team members and other narrators from the community talked about the importance of reading and the enjoyment books can bring.

According to Davis, the results from this year’s effort proved very encouraging.

“Overall it was an extremely gratifying experience. On record, over 1,200 children from 25 schools and 13 guest narrators from Atlantis and the local community participated.

“We got to go into the community and talk to people about how important reading is and encourage them to do more of it. The kids were very excited to see us, and all the schools were great participants.

“The teachers and principals were amazing and helped out tremendously. We could not have asked for better support from those we worked with.”

Atlantis Against Illiteracy aims to help eradicate illiteracy in The Bahamas where some 20 percent of the population are said to have ‘below basic’ literacy skills and are unable to read or fill out a job application.

The campaign targets young people by hosting events and competitions that expose children to books at an early age.