Mother of two's visit to the library leads to an encounter with NABU

Meet Ingabire D’amour, who is a single mother and lives in Masoro. Masoro is located just about an hour north of Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. Ingabire is currently raising two lovely girls, her daughter Akaliza Melodia and her niece Teta Queen.

Ingabire, who is very passionate about education, often visits the Masoro Learning Centre. During one of such visits she met a NABU reading ambassador, who introduced her to the reading application. The ambassador helped her to install the app and gave her tips on how to continuously engage her young ones with it. As the only parent to two young girls, she was excited to learn that she can access many digital books through her phone without making many trips to the community library.

“A NABU representative told me that there is a reading application for children, and they helped me to install it on my phone. I was happy to know that because before,I was anxious that my children wouldn’t like reading while it was a culture I grew up with.” -Igambire

Ingabire who has been using the NABU App with her children for a while now notes that she has seen a shift in their attitude towards reading as well as their academic performance.

“Before my children encountered the App, they were barely interested in reading, but now anytime they come from school, they ask me for my phone to continue reading where they left off,” she added.

Ingabire, who engages in small-scale farming, adds that before she did not spend a lot of time with the children because she did not have any activities they could do together. But now that she has the NABU App on her phone, she sets aside time to read with her young ones.

“NABU brought me closer to my children when I read the books or when they tell me what they read on the app, which makes me feel engaged with their daily life and education. I would like my neighbors or people to know the importance of teaching children how to read when they are still young because it is beneficial,” she said

The two girls are full of life. They are quite adventurous, playful and have smiles that will melt your heart. Akaliza Melodia, who is eight year old, would like to be a leader when she grows up. She tells us that she wants to help people in her community and be a good example to other children.

“I like reading NABU stories with my mother because it makes reading more enjoyable, but I also read by myself sometimes. Out of all the stories I read on the NABU app, the story of Matwi interests me more because he respects his parents,” she said.

Teta Queen on the other hand is nine years old and her dream is to be a doctor. She wants to help people by treating them when they are sick. Her favourite book is “Furaha Saves the Farm” on the NABU app because Furaha helps her grandfather bring back bees to his dry farm.

“When I am with my colleagues, I share different stories that I read on the NABU app, and when I share them, It helps me memorize,” Teta said.

The NABU team visited Ingabire, Akaliza and Teta at home and shared beautiful moments.

Together with our partnership with HP we have reached over 1.2 million children so far and together we are developing the HP Creative Lab in Rwanda, where over 200 African authors and illustrators will be trained each year to create beautiful high-quality early grade stories in mother tongue languages, providing an essential bridge to literacy!