Abbas Jadkarim, from the Eastern Province Read Me Group for Spreading Reading, browses through some reading material. (Saudi Gazette photo by Joe Avance?a) DAMMAM: Saudi university students from the Eastern Province and Jeddah have organized themselves into five teams of 20 members each to promote the culture of reading, and thus hopefully encourage other youths from other parts of the Kingdom to develop the habit of reading. The five teams, three in the Eastern Province and two in Jeddah, call themselves the Read Me Group for Spreading Reading. The reading project was started two years ago, but is now gaining popularity among students, according to Abbas Jadkarim, vice president of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) Read Me Group in the Eastern Province. The membership of each group is limited to 20 members for the reason that it is easier to have interaction within a small group and thus attain cohesiveness and allow for free-wheeling discussion during meetings. “What we do is require each member of our group to read a book, and then we all meet and sit down for three to four hours once a month to discuss the salient features of the books we have read – the merits and the lessons derived from them – and then come up with a unified opinion about those books,” Jadkarim said. The Read Me Group at KFUPM was started by Bader Al-Rasheed, who is now its president. The two other Read Me Groups in the Eastern Province are the Boys Read Me Group and the Girls Read Me Group. The two Read Me Groups in Jeddah are also active within universities and are composed of the Boys Read Me Group and the Girls Read Me Group. The Read Me Groups also organize lectures and invite resource speakers to discuss important issues, and function under the umbrella of the Association of Social Awareness and Rehabilitation, a non-governmental organization. “We are basically supporting ourselves in this endeavor,” said Jadkarim, a second year chemical engineering student at KFUPM. “We buy and source our own books,” he said. Members of the Read Me Groups read all kinds of books, including Islamic studies, literature, novels, history, self-development books, and human relations, among others. One of the books which has been read and discussed by the five Read Me Groups, is Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi's “A Life in Management” in Arabic. The Read Me Group is one of the 30 organizations currently participating in the ongoing KFUPM Volunteering Week.
