Sponsor Newspapers for Schools

For all those who are keen to promote the quality of English at our local secondary schools, I must say the New Straits Times (NST) has come up with a fairly innovative programme for everyone from corporates to individuals like you or me to help promote the English language.

The NST has started the School Sponsorship Programme with the following objectives:

• To promote the use of newspapers as an alternative teaching material in classroom
• To supplement the Education Ministry’s effort towards improving the standard of English among students
• To promote the value of a caring society and encourage the practice of giving back to the community

The cost of sponsorship is "subsidised" at RM0.80 per copy, instead of RM1.20 street price. The sponsorship package is easily affordable by individuals and corporates as follows:

1. Min 1 copy per day x 103 school days (6 months) = RM82.40
2. Min 1 copy per day x 205 school days (12 months) = RM164.00
3. Min 5 copies per day x 205 school days (12 months) = RM820.00
   

As the regular readers will know that I feel strongly about the serious decline in the standards of English in our Malaysian schools through my posts here, here and here. I also feel that reading English newspapers daily (even if sometimes just for the comics section!) during my primary and secondary school years has helped my English language skills tremendously, especially since my parents knows barely a handful of English words.

This writer and his wife will be doing our little part by sponsoring schools from our hometown Batu Pahat. Under the programme, you are allowed to choose which school you would like to sponsor from a list of schools published.

For those who can afford to help, you may sponsor via credit cards here, or you may instead print out a sponsorship form here and post your cheque to NST.

As publicised by the NST a few weeks earlier:

Under the programme, the NST, together with its sister daily Berita Harian, will work with the Education Ministry to supply the NST to schools, especially in rural areas.Some 285 schools and more than 10,000 students have been selected for the programme.

For further enquiries, please call Mohd Azali Abdul or Fauzi Che’ Chik of the School Sponsorship Programme unit at 03-2282-3131 ext 2852/5108. You will also be able to follow the updates on the programme practically on a daily basis through the NST website. I'm a believer that every little bit helps :)