As part of celebrating World Book Day (WBD), the South African Book Development Council (SABDC), handed over 1700 books to the city’s Project Literacy yesterday. The project is a national non-profit organisation specialising in a range of programmes. This includes adult and youth education and training programmes; educator training; community development; and informal early childhood development (EDC) programmes in under-resourced areas.
For National Book Week (NBW), Project Literacy pulled out its own Run Home to Read programme. The organisation’s chief executive, Steven le Roux, said many caregivers in under-served communities were illiterate or semi-illiterate. This meant they could not afford to send their children to EDC sites or creches. “Many women attending adult literacy programmes cite the wish to teach their children or grandchildren to read and help them with their homework,” said Le Roux. The programme comes as a great benefit to these women.
About 600 children’s books and 250 for adults out of the 1700 will be given to Gauteng’s community organisations under Project Literacy. Lesedi Community Development Centre’s children were present to receive their share of the books. The RHTR project provides literacy books in indigenous South African languages to pre-school children between 3 and 7 years.
Literacy in the Home
Chief executive of SABDC, Elitha van der Sandt saif that having as few as 20 books in the home was the leading indicator for children achieving levels of education, but more than half of South African households did not have a single leisure reading book at home. According to Van der Sandt, this alarmed the #BuyABook campaign, which sought to be an easy, cost-effective way to contribute to the empowerment of all South Africans.
Although the donations were for Project Literacy during WBD, van der Sandt said that SA Booksellers Association members also participated. This includes Exclusive Books, Bargain Books and Wordsworth Books, who sold seven of the WBD children’s books in store for R25 until April 30th.