Reading in the times of ignorance: Mandla Langa
Mandla Langa is an accomplished author whose book The Lost Colours of the Chameleon won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award for Africa., and his latest novel is The Texture of Shadows. Mandla speaks to us about growing up reading in a world where books were not a priority:
I grew up in Mayville, Durban, as the fifth child in a family of nine, including my parents….
Language can reshape our economy: David Harrison
What do you do when you’ve stared at the same problem for years but still cannot figure out how to solve it? You frame it differently and see it through someone else’s eyes.
So the next time we hold a big education summit in South Africa, we don’t invite educationists, but civil engineers.
They might picture the education system as a high-rise building, but would not…
Financial Literacy: Maureen du Toit
Maureen du Toit, from Haenertsburg, is the founder of the website funeconomix.co.za which features her stories, workbooks and talks and where you can ask Whyman a money-related question.
Maureen du Toit loves the colour purple. She wears it often. It is the colour of prosperity, she explains, which is probably why the characters in her books are “perky, pointy, purple people”.
Du Toit has spent the…
How stories develop empathy: Peter Gray
Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College (Massachusetts, USA) has conducted and published research in neuroendocrinology, developmental psychology, anthropology, and education. He also authors a regular blog called Freedom to Learn, for Psychology Today magazine. He speaks to us about the role of reading in developing empathy:
Empathy is believed, by many psychologists, to be the biological foundation for morality. To empathise is…
Nal’ibali ‘Story Power’ flash mobs: Bringing home the power of stories
This month, Nal’ibali began the roll-out of its ‘Story Power: Bring It Home’ campaign. As part of the campaign, 500 multilingual billboards have been erected nationwide, imparting one important message: Stories have the power to change children’s lives, and PARENTS have the power to bring home those stories to their children.
To celebrate the launch of the drive, and to engage communities in the messaging,…
Reading to rise: Taryn Lock
Taryn Lock is the director of Read to Rise, and tells us about her journey to help create a literate South Africa. Years ago, she took a sabbatical to accompany her husband who was studying at Harvard, she didn’t realise that she’d come home with a different career path too.
“While I was there, I thought I would keep myself busy by teaching English to…
Puku launches isiXhosa story competition
The PUKU Children’s Literature Foundation had their official launch for their isiXhosa Story Competition on Wednesday 1 October 2014 in Grahamstown. Teachers, parents, students and community leaders attended the event at Nombulelo Secondary School in the Joza Township.
This amazing story competition isn’t simply about the powerful effects of creativity and writing. It strives to celebrate and promote the isiXhosa language – allowing a platform for children to express…
Cultivating a reading culture is key to the country’s future
It’s International Translation Day, and so it is an appropriate day on which to ask:
Why is literacy important?
The answer is simple: We will never succeed economically, or as a society, if we are not literate. Literacy remains the key to unlocking South Africa’s success and yet both numerical and linguistic literacy continue to evade us. As a multilingual, multicultural society, social cohesion and deep learning can happen only if we create a plethora of “literacies” in…
Nal’ibali launches ‘Story Power. Bring it home.’ billboard campaign
OCTOBER 2014: Nal’ibali has launched a new billboard campaign to generate awareness and discussion around the power of stories to spark all children’s potential. Building on the simple logic that a well-established culture of reading can be a real game-changer for education in South Africa, the campaign seeks to inspire and motivate parents and caregivers to give their children a head-start in life, by…
How family stories transform children’s lives
“Once upon a time, there was a very clever young man in a certain village. People were jealous about this. One day an old man came to visit this young clever man to ask him some difficult questions to prove his intelligence…”
This Heritage Day, we asked our team and children who attend Nal’ibali reading clubs to record some of the old stories their families…