Finnish literacy work on export at international events

A Book Bag to Every Baby Born in Finland, Prata Bok at the Helsinki Book Fair, and other reading promotion activities of the Finnish Reading Center are attracting interest abroad. The Finnish Reading Center has been invited to four different events in Europe to present our activities this autumn.

Cultural producer Barbro Enckell-Grimm represented the Finnish Reading Center at the Gothenburg Book Fair in September to present Prata Bok, a student-focused project where young readers talk directly to other young people about their reading experiences through author interviews at the Helsinki Book Fair.

The Finnish Reading Center’s director Emmi Jäkkö participated in two seminars in Sofia in October: the Reading Foundation Bulgaria’s Future 2.0 forum and a child research conference organised by ISSA. At both seminars, Jäkkö spoke about A Book Bag to Every Baby Born in Finland, which is a nationwide Finnish book gifting programme, and the importance of supporting early reading to promote strong literacy later in a child’s life.

Portugal’s annual literacy conference was held in Lisbon in November. The Finnish Reading Center’s director Emmi Jäkkö gave a keynote speech in which she highlighted concrete proposals on how to strengthen children’s joy of reading. In her speech, Jäkkö mentioned, among other things, the book gifting programme being included in the Finnish national budget, author visits at schools, and Words Matter, an award-winning rap workshop project.

The Finnish Reading Center shares its know-how as inspiration for reading promotion actors in other countries. International cooperation is important also because the Finnish Reading Center receives valuable information about different book gifting programmes, projects and literacy programmes and their impact in other countries.

The Finnish Reading Center operates internationally as part of the European literacy network EURead and the Global Network for Early Years Bookgifting.