Literacy Blog

Times are tough. In South Africa, one in three adults is unemployed. Load shedding is pummeling our economy, and only four in 10 children who attend preschool programmes are on track to thrive by the time they start school. It is easy for funders, policymakers, and community organisations to feel torn. Is it more impactful to put bread on a family's table today, or to...

  Storytelling is an essential forerunner in children’s literacy development and an important way of preserving culture and language. Yet many of the same stories appear in different parts of the world: passed down from generation to generation, retold in various languages and with different cultural adaptations. These classic fairy tales contain important moral lessons and universal human truths.    As part of Literacy and Heritage Month,...

This June, as we remember the Soweto youth who protested the use of Afrikaans and English as the languages of school instruction amongst other injustices, the Nal’ibali reading-for-enjoyment campaign calls on aspiring and established authors to donate their original African language stories. South Africa faces a critical lack of children’s literature in indigenous languages and Nal’ibali believes is is these stories that motivate and inspire...

Lack of access to reading material and books remains one of the biggest challenges in bridging the gap of illiteracy in South Africa. According to educational experts, fixing the literacy crisis would require the coming together of multiple players, and this is why three NGO's and the Liberty Community Trust have partnered to lend a helping hand. Research shows that 78% of Grade 4 learners...