Then unemployed local people who are literate in relevant languages are identified to be trained as ‘Reading Champions’. These champions are allocated families where the carers and children are keen to participate, and the reading, playing and learning takes place in and around the homes, using the home language. This empowers the adults involved to participate and creates a situation where the learning is available to all interested parties, including older children who may be struggling at school. The relevant languages for the project are identified.

Our staff and managers select families (the number depends on the funding available) where the caregivers agree to take part with our Reading Champions in all the activities they will do with the children in their homes. We then interview candidate Reading Champions from the identified language groups, check the candidates’ records and explain that our RCs receive the training, early learning materials, and are paid a stipend for the days when they work for RHTR.

Our training for Reading Champions (RCs) focuses on enhancing pre-school mother tongue literacy. So we train our RCs to work respectfully with the caregivers in their homes and encourage the caregivers to take an increasing role in the early learning activities, which should be lively, active and fun. 

The RCs are also trained to help the caregivers to further develop their childcare and parenting skills. And once they are happy with the basic reading, counting, singing and action games performed together we try to extend cognitive development and introduce English as an additional language for the children.

Once the RCs have been trained it is important that an action plan is agreed in general and followed by caregivers, children and RCs. It may vary at times to allow for a visit or adjust to the weather, for example. People must be present at home and ready for action when the RC is expected.

If a visit to a library or a playground or an outing with another family is planned, everyone must know what they need to take with them, and the leaving and home times must be set. If caregivers do not participate the main reason for the RHTR approach is undermined. This includes empowering the RCs and the caregivers as well as the children; and gradually building up a community where people know and respect each other and provide help and support.

Project Literacy has our own series of books in South African languages, and we also have good relations with a number of organisations which assist us to obtain physical books for RHTR as well as on-line books which our RCs can access.  Our own books start with stories mainly told through pictures, so people can look at the books and tell the stories in their own words, even before they can read. Even adults who can’t read in their own language can show the pictures and tell the stories.

The words which are read/spoken as part of the book are then ALWAYS understood! It is not painfully pronouncing a word, and then another word, without knowing what it is all about. It is telling a story or giving some information or explaining an idea in your own language! 

Our RCs try to get all members of the family or friends who are present to join in telling the stories or reading, so that a culture of reading gradually becomes a part of everyday life. The RHTR books use more words as the series develops. 

Children learn through play, exploring new ideas, movements, songs, etc. So RHTR also provides a range of other simple things like buttons and beads, bats and balls, numbers and cards, playdough and crayons, pictures, shapes and colours with demonstrations of how to use them. All of these kind of initiatives can provide the community with high quality and fun learning resources that continue to be used by the beneficiaries after the project intervention is concluded.

The RCs sometimes bring together more than one family, often from the same language group, but sometimes larger, so they can share some activities. This could be anything from physical games to acting, singing and dancing as well as reading or drawing or work with shapes and numbers.  

We always aim to increase the use of and access to libraries by underprivileged families. Some areas have a library, and we get our RCs to arrange visits to borrow and return books and also to read or listen to stories at the library in groups. Sometimes there is a school with a library and they can be persuaded to let us use it under the supervision of the RC. In such cases the library may have a very small or very poor stock of suitable books for young children and Project Literacy can help RHTR to obtain books which we can donate to enrich it as a community resource. We can also advise libraries about free open education resources they can access. We are currently exploring an initiative which has been suggested by the FH Chamberlain Foundation to establish a mobile library in part of Pretoria to serve a group of primary schools and the RHTR groups in the area.

Sometimes a community agrees to offer a space (like a schoolroom at the weekend or a church hall) which our champions can use to bring together caregivers and families to build family and community bonds leading to increased greater social cohesion and stability. This can also create a safe space for young learners to come to and support each other when there is nowhere else for them to do so.

The RCs are trained to take notes and make a written report monthly to the field worker about the children with whom they work. In 2023 we decided that this process needed to be standardised, so we developed 4 new templates for our progress reports. These are used for children from the ages of 2-3, 3-4, 4-5 and 5-6 respectively. The standards used are based on the Department of Basic Education’s National Early Learning and Development Standards (NELDS) for children from birth to 4 years old (2009) and the Independent Schools Association of South Africa (ISASA)’s ECD Curriculum Guidelines for Grades 0-3 (2015). We have simplified our reports so that they are streamlined and manageable, whilst ensuring that important information is systematically recorded.

The field worker for each project receives reports from each of the RCs and makes sure they are submitted regularly. She or he also helps the RCs to understand what is important and what is irrelevant. The field worker compiles a file for the project with comments and suggestions which she or he submits to the Project Manager. They may from time to time decide that there is a problem which requires the help of an outside agency or specialist. If this occurs, the senior manager of RHTR at Project Literacy’s HQ will organise the necessary help or action. 

Normally the reports simply serve to help us to monitor and evaluate the work of the RCs and also to begin to create a track record for each learner/beneficiary. 

We are committed to beginning a pilot tracer study in the near future but have not yet raised sufficient funds. We should like to trace the impact of our RHTR programme on the children who participate over several years, as we believe the impact is very significant. At this point our evidence is mainly anecdotal which is not enough.