Building literacy through access to books
to advance similar or more advanced objectives – I’ve seen directly how book access has a crucial role to play in building children’s literacy. As publishers, we need to achieve the stated goal of ensuring that each child has a textbook for all subjects in an ongoing basis. Our industry will do this in partnership with government through the provincial education departments.
Publishers will also have to grow the number of people who can read their books in electronic formats.
Finally, we absolutely must contribute in the development and publication of books in all South African languages. Pasa has a structured internship programme targeted towards otherwise unemployed black graduates wanting to gain experience in the publishing industry. It includes both practical “handson” experiential learning and a broader theoretical component. It’s one very direct way we’re trying to both broaden access to the industry and develop capacity to publish high-quality books in all of our country’s languages. We also provide business training to help develop emerging companies working with indigenous language publishing and are developing two qualifications (commissioning and editing) with the help of the Fibre Processing and Manufacturing Seta and Quality Council for Trades and Occupations to help develop formal training in the sector.
● Reading stories to children in their home language provides them with a strong foundation for language learning and increases their chances of academic success. For more information about Nal’ibali or to access stories in a range of SA languages, visit: www.nalibali.org.