Reading Representatives in Finland: "Reading is magic!"

- The feedback in Åboland has been very favorable, says Christina Grönholm about the project to build up an association with Reading Representatives. Christina works at Kårkulla nursing home in Pargas.

- Apart from Kårkulla, a nursing home quartering 90 people, there are 25 units in my area, daycentres and groupliving apartments, recounts Christina.
She is one of the three Reading Representatives working to establish the project in Åboland in the south of Finland. Christina phoned all the units and asked the employees to reflect on their reading habits at work.

- I told them I would return to them soon with more questions.
- And I did. But the result was piteous! Most of them had no reading habits at all.
Now, one and a half year later, things are different. 24 of 25 units took active part in the project from the beginning. Today 14 units have timetabled, steady reading. In those places where reading is no longer so common, the reason usually is that the responsible employee has left the unit.
Christina has arranged two reading-meetings, each of them at three different places and the influx has been good. She chose to build up a new, small library at Kårkulla nursing home with the 50 easy-to-read project-books as a foundation.
- After all, Kårkulla is where most of the people in the target-group live, says Christina. There are 90 residents at Kårkulla.
A couple of public libraries in the area have taken interest in the project. The library in Kimito has taken the initiative to buy a number of easy-to-read books and the library in Pargas, too, has bought a range of read-to-read books and this library has also opened a special easy-to-read area for these books.
Christina Grönholm is not a novice when it comes to reading. She has been reading in all her groups since 1983.
- There is something magic about reading, she says. It is like the air is all still around you when you are reading.
Ann Marie Lindman
Centre for Easy-to-Read, Stockholm