This year the Nal’ibali reading-for-enjoyment campaign is offering children and caregivers the opportunity to become Story Champions by growing their own home libraries of South African children’s stories, thereby encouraging them to become regular readers.
‘’All of us – children and adults alike – can become readers one book at a time,” says Yandiswa Xhakaza, Nal’ibali CEO. “Everyone can be a reader if they are…
By Sindiwe Magona
Babies come into the world ready to learn what it means to be human, and it is the responsibility of the grownups into whose laps they fall, to teach them, just as their caregivers taught them when they first arrived on earth.
All we know and all we will ever know, is what we have learned. Therefore, while we all lament the sad…
“Reading and sharing stories with children is one of the most powerful gifts you can give them. Not only does it help to develop children’s literacy skills, but it also fires up those parts of the brain concerned with imagination, emotion and movement. Ultimately, it helps to create the neural circuits that enable sophisticated thinking and reasoning, helping children to do well at school,”…
Yandiswa Xhakaza is an MBA graduate and the CEO of the Nal’ibali reading-for-enjoyment campaign. Having taken up her position just weeks ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, she is using her business insights to steer the organisation through the recession. She offers tips and advice to other NGOs below.
As a social activist, I understand all too well the mechanics and complexities of development work. There…
Yandiswa Xhakaza
CEO at The Nal’ibali Trust
I have heard parents aspire for their children to only speak English or they at least prioritise the speaking of the English language above all other languages, particularly not their own African languages. Why? I have often wondered why parent choices around languages often almost place English as superior to their own home languages. I have come to learn…
Standard Bank has partnered with the Nal’ibali reading-for-enjoyment campaign to launch a special COVID-19 relief project aimed at helping select communities in Gauteng and Limpopo to navigate and alleviate the disruptions to the 2020 school year and beyond, through the power of stories.
While the pandemic has presented major challenges for most families, the partners have chosen to see the opportunity in the crisis and…