'Kid Scoop' Page Has an Impact in Uganda

By: E&P Staff Children in Uganda are learning to read English from a syndicated youth page published in the U.S.

Each week since March 2006, Gloria Reichmann -- an American teaching in villages near Mityana, Uganda -- has received 100 copies of the "Kid Scoop" page as it appears in The Wenatchee (Wash.) World.

Teresa Ockinga, the World's Newspaper in Education manager, arranged the delivery of "Kid Scoop" to Africa. Postage is paid by a Wenatchee Kiwanis Club that also sends books and other school supplies to Uganda.

Reichmann, in an e-mail to Ockinga, noted that the youth page is especially helpful because the classrooms of 70-130 students usually have no textbooks.

The page also appears in nearly 400 other newspapers in the U.S., Canada, Korea, and Thailand, according to Kid Scoop company President/CEO Vicki Whiting, who began the feature as a fourth-grade teacher in 1985.