**Books Not Codein: Distribution of 70+ Personal Development Books And Initiating A Reading Club In Uyo High School, In Akwa Ibom State Nigeria.**

Some Books Leave Us free and Some Books Make Us Free -- Anonymous

A few days i made a post on how we Lead World were making plans to reach out to students in our catchment area to influence for a better future, with the theme Books Not Codein aim at cultivating a reading culture amongst them especially as regards personal development.
Well, yesterday as projected we reached out to this students and it was indeed a worthwhile experience. The excitement and open mindedness of the students in receiving us was overwhelming.

The LEADERS READ is aimed at pointing this generation of teenagers to the values residual in books. We will feel safer if these one are reading and reading the right things. Mr Godwin Kalu , Team Leader

The school however did not have a hall were we could address all the students at a time.
However we had to group ourselves into five groups in the pairs of two and addressed each of the class.

• The school has given us 10-20mins to go into SS1 & 2 classes to address them and talk about the readers club
  

So, to save time, we'll ran the talk in the 14 classrooms simultaneously for 5-10mins in each class and delivered the talk on "Books not Codeine".

Team members briefly addressing the students

OUTLINE FOR YOUR DISCUSSION IN CLASSES

1. Introduce yourself (your name and that you're a team member of Lead world)
2. A sentence on what Lead world is about
3. Then, just a brief talk on "books not codeine"
4. Lead world is setting up a young readers club for students interested in developing a reading culture. Perhaps, they've been struggling but they really desire to develop their studying habit. It's not compulsory, just interested students.

The above template is given by our project coordinator.

We were careful not mention that we have books for them, to cut down on some unserious students who simply want freebies and are not willing to actually develop themselves)

Below is a brief on what i shared with the student i talked with in SS1 B:

Good morning Students.
I'm seeing you for the first time. I'll soon introduce myself to you. My name is Samuel and am here with my colleague Alfa. We are from Lead World and we are to share something amazing with you guys.

For the next 5 minutes, I want to give you a piece of information that will radically transform your life.

As a way to creating a common ground i had to ask for their names as well. And gave opportunity for at least 5 students for introduce themselves as well.
What amazed me was when one of the student introduced himself as Dr Emmanual Fred.

It was a good time interacting with this students.

How many of you want to be great in life?
(a lot of hands were raise and they were so interested in what i would say next)

No one becomes great in life who didn't do anything to be great. Everybody can't be great until everyone begins to pay the prices for greatness. Every student can't excel until every student begins to pay the price for greatness.

We're part of an organization with the vision to raise a generation of young persons with the heart for Leadership excellence. We teach skills that can help you stand out, get better and become a positive influence to your world.

We have 3 core values, which are Character transformation, personal effectiveness and team building.

src

For today, my focus will be on Character transformation. Your character is a strong attitude that controls how you behave and act. Many persons are drawn to attitudes, hobbies, friends that look like them. True /False?

As I round off, let me Share just 2 things with you that will determine the outcome of your life:

1. The quality of friends you keep.

• Don't make friends with negative people.
  Don't make friends with people that don't have respect for godly values.
• Wrong friends come with wrong attitudes. Many wrong attitudes are picked from friends. Attitudes like Drugs, pornography, addictions. Now school children are vulnerable to drug abuse. They destroy their future without knowing.

2. The books you read.

• if you are not reading, you are missing.
  books are containers of wisdom.

• Great men and women are book lovers.

• Read your way to greatness. Don't be distracted. There's no offer today that should make you think that you don't need knowledge.
  
  src
  Lastly:
  We're bringing to you an opportunity to be part of an initiative, a young readers club.

• You'll have an opportunity to read personal development books and we'll review them together.

• You'll have an opportunity to be taught soft skills like ; Goal setting skills, time management; building your self identity, etc.

We all concluded our talks by let them know we are out for only those of them that were serious as regards the vision we had shared

Interested student were required to write their names, class and state 3 reasons why he or she would love to jion the readers clubs. We did some selection excercise based on their answer and about 70 students were selected as candidates for the club.

This is the team members selecting the candidate for the readers clubs. We are going through their write ups and it was funful seeing amazing responds on why they wanted to jion the Leaders club.

The selected student met with us outside and they are properly briefed on who we really are and the structures we have set in order to help them grow in character and learning.
70 personal development books were given them for free to the students.

And we had a consensus of meeting with them for an hour every Wednesday to review this books and groom them in other areas that would better position them as excellent leaders of tomorow.

Cross of students who were given personal development text taking a shot with our team.

cross section of Lead World Team

Hi team mates, thank you for your support towards the success success of LEADERS READ INITIATIVE 2018. We've sown seeds in the hearts of these lads.

We'll be available to water these seeds for the next one year.

Special thanks to:
Mr Godwin Kalu
Joy
Asuquo
Anita
Richard
Grace kalu
Glory
Alfa
Unyime
Chidimma

You guys made it rock! I had so much fun serving in the team. #LeadersRead was a worthwhile project