Co-founders of Perbi Cubs sandwiching Kanéval partner-influencer, Nana Aba Anamoah, media personality & General Manager of GHOne TV/Starr FM.

This year, the capital city of Ghana where my wife hails from and where I was born has been named by UNESCO as its twenty-third World Book Capital. Accra takes over from Guadalajara, Mexico (2022) and will be handing the baton to Strasbourg, France come April 2024.  Since ‘kané’ is the Ga word for read—and Ga being the language of the Accra people—Perbi Cubs Library services creatively replaced the near-homophonic ‘carni’ in ‘carnival’ with ‘kané’ and coined the word ‘Kanéval’ to bring fun to reading, which is otherwise unfortunately perceived widely as a bore and a chore.

As official partners of UNESCO Accra World Book Capital 2023 (AWBC ‘23), Perbi Cubs will be organizing Kanéval as a fantastic year-long program, a traveling fun fair transitioning from place to place with lots of amusements intertwined with lots of reading. You will find a fuller history of the UNESCO AWBC’23 partnership and details of the year-long fiesta here.

RESCUE FROM KANÉBALS

We are of the conviction that this Kanéval social service campaign needs to involve key influencers from all walks of life, from CEOs to Black Stars players to musicians, to consistently show that reading is fun and leads to success. The campaign will consist of various events in-person and online, including book fairs, storytelling sessions, and community outreach programs. By making reading fun and accessible, we can encourage more people to read and ultimately improve literacy rates in the community.

When we began approaching various influencers to join us on this reading revolution campaign, a massive behavioural change intervention, some of the stories we heard about the generally poor reading attitudes and habits of Ghanaian society were stupefying. We found kindred spirit in Nana Aba Anamoah (photo above), media personality and General Manager of GHOne and Starr FM, who unbeknownst to us had years back initiated a reading campaign known as ‘Raising Readers.’ She too had involved several influencers, including former Ghanaian president Jerry John Rawlings, to read with the children in a certain deprived area of Accra. Book donations in their thousands to the cause were a shot in the arm.

At some point it was clear parental involvement would bolster this behavioural change campaign. Some parent did accompany their children and wards to the reading sessions. Mostly reluctantly. In spite of these mostly illiterate parents sucking their teeth after only a little while, thinking of all the other more ‘productive’ ways they could be spending their time, Nana Aba and team pressed on. In fact, at the height of her intervention they had decided that once a week was not enough for the pace and profundity of the transformation they sought so they decided to leave books with the families and replace them when they returned the week after.

Cofounders of Perbi Cubs with yet another partner-influencer, Kafui Dey, author and GTV Breakfast host

All seemed well and good until the following week when some medical doctors on the Raising Readers campaign team who had gone down the road to grab some snacks returned with horror on their faces. When Nana Aba relates this story, she might not be aware but her face betrays the pain of the let-down she felt. The snacks that the team mates purchased in the catchment area had been nicely wrapped in freshly torn out pages of last week’s books! Kanébals (do you see what I’ve done with ‘cannibal’ and ‘kané’?) had dismembered the hitherto living literary friends, ripping them from their saddle-stitched and perfect-bound spines and repurposing the cadavers as food packaging. Ah!

When we related this story to another influencer on our bill, Kafui Dey (photo above), author and Breakfast host on GTV, he told us worse. Sometimes it’s pages of even the Bible that are Kanébalized for wrapping food!

WANTED: KANÉVORES IN THE KAPITAL

Perbi Cubs, convinced that readers are leaders and leaders are readers, has from inception sought to raise lion-leaders, hence the referral to our 10,000 young patrons as cubs (the young of lions) rather than the typical ‘kids’ (the young of goats).

By the end of the year-long Accra World Book Kapital, we seek to have enrolled an army of at least 100,000 cubs who are voracious readers, Kanévores. If carnivorous lions are the king of the jungle, we imagine that Kanévores rule the world.

KALL TO ACTION

According to UNESCO, as of 2021 only 6% of children in classes two and three in public basic schools could read and understand anything they read. Lack of sufficient reading resources and very large class sizes are among the root causes of the problem, but the overarching root cause is that society does not value reading. Reading is seen as a chore, a punishment or even a necessary evil! Yet per credible research, the love for reading is a stronger indicator of a child’s success in school and their future career than even their parents’ level of education and their socioeconomic status.

With media personality and reigning Ghanaian Journalist of the Year, Portia Gabor, at the TV3 studios in Accra. Portia’s partnering Perbi Cubs for this vital social intervention, Kanéval!

Join us in promoting the joy of reading and improving literacy rates in the community, particularly among children in public basic schools, by becoming a partner for Kanéval. Together, we can make a real difference in the lives of our community members and future generations. Let’s celebrate and make the most of Accra’s selection as UNESCO World Book Capital 2023.

KONCLUSION

Accra has been selected as UNESCO World Book Capital 2023 and Kanéval is a one-year social service campaign organized by Perbi Cubs, as official partners of UNESCO AWBC 2023, to celebrate this achievement and promote the joy of reading and improving literacy rates in the community.

The success of the campaign depends on a coalition of all stakeholders in the book industry, influencers, and strong partnership with the media. Together, through massive Kanévals all year, we can raise Kanévores and end apathy towards the written word that results in Kanébalism and the like. May readers rise and leaders come to light to transform society and impact the world—from Africa to the Rest.