Read to Change

Started in 2015, Hans Andersen Club collaborated with Dr. Annis Fung, the Associate Professor of Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences in City University of Hong Kong launching the “Read to Change” project, which provides school-based storytelling social groups, with the use of Social Information Process (SIP) and Storytelling Intervention Therapy, which is the first in the world aiming to promote children’s pro-social behaviour, childhood aggression and conflict management.

The research revealed that Storytelling Intervention Therapy is effective in preventing children from becoming revengers or bullies. The children’s aggressive behaviour reduced by nearly half after participating in the project. Storytelling Intervention Therapy can also improve children’s emotion control, anger control and ability in dealing with social communication. The frequency of children triggered to anger dropped by 8% and the anger control index increased by 13% after the project, meaning that children were more willing and able to control their anger. Comparing with those who did not join any story group, Storytelling Intervention Therapy has shown a greater effect on anger control 11 times more.

Serving schools from different districts, till March 2019, the project had served a total of 55 schools, with accumulative beneficiaries of more than 20,000 students. The project gained a lot of positive feedback. The research gives evidence support that storytelling can enhance children’s anger management, empathy, social communication skills and social relationship. More than 70% of parents of participants stated that their children had improved their social skills and becoming more willing to helping others.

Research results were presented in academic conference held in Berlin in 2019 while an initial sharing with more than a hundred teachers and social workers was conducted at  the HKCSS conference in 2017(The HKCSS Convention 2017, per video below). The project was awarded “Knowledge Transfer Award” by the City University of Hong Kong in 2022, and “A qualitative method to examine the positive impact of a storytelling intervention in reducing reactive and proactive aggression in young children” was published in “Applied Research in Quality of Life” in 2023.