Family Literacy Project empowering families through reading

Every year, to celebrate World Read Aloud Day, the Family Literacy Project (FLP), based in Underberg, hosts a reading club for 5 000 kids from rural schools around the area, to experience the joys of both being read to and reading aloud.

“We have a peer-based reading programme and also include the elders. So children can read to their elders as well. Storytelling is a big part of communities and so we celebrate storytelling and sharing of stories from generation to generation,” explained FLP director Pierre Horn.

FLP was founded in 2000 to address the poor improvement of preschoolers’ early literacy levels. The NPO’s aim is to “make reading a shared and valuable pleasure through instilling the value of parents and caregivers understanding that they are their child’s first teacher”.

Horn said their assessments at rural crèches found the biggest problem hindering the progress of young children’s literacy development was that their parents were illiterate. The FLP’s focus, therefore, is on family literacy, with an emphasis on life skills.

FLP works with 25 schools in deep rural areas, predominantly in the Harry Gwala District in the Southern Drakensberg. They have facilitators visiting 250 homes, as well as providing ‘hanging libraries’ in homes for the families. FLP also has container libraries set up in rural areas for the communities.

“There’s an average of six to 11 kids in a home, so that means through the project, we are reaching around 1500 children, through fostering a reading environment and improving literacy skills in each household,” Horn explained.