The latest results of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study indicate that basic literacy among SA children has further deteriorated.
An astounding 81% of grade 4 pupils cannot read for meaning in any language.
This rate went up from 78% pre-pandemic, which evidently suggests that the SA literacy crisis is far from over.
Collaborative efforts such as Yizani Sifunde are believed to be possible solutions by educational experts.
Yizani Sifunde (isiXhosa for ‘come, let’s read’) is a special reading-intervention project involving three prominent SA literacy NGOs — Book Dash, Nal’ibali and Wordworks — and made possible by the Liberty Community Trust.
The project is aimed at early childhood development (ECD) and since its inception in 2021, has provided more than 3,000 young children from communities in East London, Elliot and Komani with high-quality storybooks in their home language, isiXhosa.
Yizani Sifunde’s project coordinator, Rodney Msomi, says collaboration is the core of the project thus community involvement is encouraged.
“We have a three-pronged approach, that includes ECD centres, parents and communities.
“We spent the first year of the project working with ECD centres and parents/guardians.
“In 2022 we started involving the broader community in our programme.
“We are now preparing to onboard more community members. We will provide training on ways to become a literacy activist or ‘FUNda leader’, as we call it.
“These skills will enable the participants to run a home- or community-based reading club.”
Using practical demonstration, Yizani Sifunde works with parents and ECD practitioners to help them share storybooks with the children, and to understand the benefits of doing so.
“Now in its third year, the project operates less-privileged areas of East London such as Bhongweni, Santa, Aiport Park, Leeches Bay, Ncera, Egoli and Fort Grey.
All interested people in the above-mentioned communities can receive training on how to establish and run their own reading clubs.
Training will take place from June 12-15 and again from June 19-22. Each session is limited to 10 participants. Interested members of the community can call or WhatsApp Msomi on 072-573-9493 to enrol.
“Yizani Sifunde’s vision is to provide communities in the Eastern Cape with high-quality early childhood development (ECD) training, an abundance of books for the children and their families, and long lasting literacy practices for the community and family,” Msomi said.
All attendees of the training will receive a free pack of four story books, and those who go on to start a reading club in the community will receive a starter-pack of 25 books for each child attending their reading club, a hanging library for their reading club and other useful training materials and support.
“The project is all about infusing the whole community with books, and this is one of the ways we can do so,” he added.
Free reading and story-sharing resources in different SA languages can also be accessed on www.nalibali.org at zero data cost.
More than 500 free Book Dash books can be read online at bookdash.org/books in a variety of languages. Wordworks’ Little Stars programme for pre-grade R teachers is designed to strengthen language and emergent literacy in pre-grade R classrooms: www.wordworks.org.za/our-early-literacy-programmes/
