The Skhaftin Bus a mobile, plastic-free grocery store reached its final destination of a six-day road trip through South Africa, arriving at Kannemeyer Primary School in Grassy Park, Cape Town to lines of children elated with the potential the bus could bring. The Skhaftin Bus a mob.
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World Read Aloud Day: Itâs imperative that we embrace literacy in 2021
By Opinion
By ZahâRah Khan
South African children, along with their global counterparts in 66 countries, will once again immerse themselves in a world of new words, interesting characters and gripping plots on World Read Aloud Day (Feb 3).
Presented by global literacy non-profit LitWorld and sponsored by Scholastic, the annual literacy celebration advocates for greater access to literacy through diverse stories, as well as the power of reading aloud.
This has shown to have an immense impact on the academic and cognitive development of a child, and as suggested by a recent national survey of 4 517 public school educators in the US , their social-emotional well-being too.
First published by GroundUp.
Learners who have already lost many months of schooling because of the Covid-19 pandemic are being dealt a second blow, as donor funding shifts away from literacy initiatives at a time that schools need these most.
Lunga Nqadolo, managing director of The Bookery in Cape Town, says donors have understandably been focused on school nutrition and protection against Covid this year. Yet this is a time learners need books, libraries and literacy initiatives more than ever, to help them catch up lost time.
“We need to feed them and then teach them,” she says.
The Bookery, founded in 2010, has been building and stocking libraries at poor schools in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Gauteng. So far, it has opened more than 80 libraries and distributed more than 300 000 books countrywide. But this year, says Nqadolo, like other similar organisations, The Bookery has not been able to use traditional fundraising.