Seychelles Creole Academy hosts story-telling for primary pupils |03 June 2022
The Seychelles Creole Academy (Lakademi Kreol Sesel), in partnership with the National Council for Children and the Ministry of Education organised a story-telling activity yesterday morning for primary pupils from different schools around Mahé.
The event took place at the Children’s Ark at Bel Eau and was organised in celebration of the second Children’s festival.
Special guests Rickam Jeannie from Plaisance secondary school and Vincent Milius narrated and performed their stories to the groups of eager children.
Vanessa Labrosse, an officer from the Seychelles Creole Academy, also held sessions of riddles and the students had fun figuring out the answers to the Creole riddles. The children listened attentively and responded excitedly during all the interactions, which lasted three hours.
The objectives of the story-telling activity were to create a fun ambiance, value the Creole language, and honour Creole literary artists and their works.
Ms Labrosse stated that the story-telling activity was also a way of preparing the students for the forthcoming Creole Festival.
“Rickam and Sir Vincent Milius are here for if the students have any questions or need any techniques and strategies for the preparation of their participation in the Creole Festival,” she said.
According to Ms Labrosse, they decided to organise the story-telling activity to bring about more leisure to the students. Due to Covid-19 restrictions last year, they were unable to gather in groups so they carried out a writing competition for both primary and secondary students to celebrate the first Children’s festival instead.
“We celebrated our first Children’s festival which was a success. This year, however, we said we’ll take primary pupils again, as well as secondary and post-secondary students. But today’s (yesterday’s) activities centred on story-telling for all the primary pupils in Seychelles, including children from the School for the Exceptional Child,” said Ms Labrosse.
Ms Labrosse remarked that the Seychelles Creole Academy wants this activity to be repeated every year during the Children’s festival, and to not just end here.
“We’ll try our best to make it a bit different each time,” she said, noting that the Seychelles Creole Academy’s programme for celebrating the Children’s festival consists of two activities. Following yesterday’s story-telling for primary students, there will soon be a public speaking activity for secondary and post-secondary students from both public and private schools. There will be elimination stages for the public speaking competition and its final session will take place on June 24 at the National Theatre.
The accompanying photos show some highlights of the story-telling activity yesterday.
Sylia Ah-Time
Photos by Louis Toussaint
