Youth get message that reading books can be fashionable and cool
FROM pop-up libraries, book-sharing initiatives to libraries on a phone; organisations across the country are doing their bit in instilling a culture of reading in young people and children.
This week marks National Book Week and today is International Literacy Day, but statistics show a bleak picture about the reading culture in South Africa.
According to the NGO Save the Children, reading statistics show that only 14% of the population are active book readers and only 5% of parents read to their children.
But the organisation wants to change this by drumming up the importance of reading to children through its Book Sharing Project.
To celebrate National Book Week the organisation has launched a project that educates caregivers and parents on fun and interactive ways to engage and stimulate children with books.
The project is already operational in two early childhood development centres, in Setswetla informal settlement in Alexandra and in Tjakastad in Mpumalanga.
Save the Children hopes that exposing young children to books will not only help them to love reading but also prepare them for when they start school.
Another organisation making reading fashionable for young people is Fun Dza Literacy Trust.
They recognise that many young people still struggle to source books in their communities and their duty is to change that.
“Literacy is a powerful tool with lifelong benefits. Reading books and stories influences one’s choices … it enhances critical and creative thinking and encourages personal development. Reading is the fundamental pillar of education. Education is the foundation of a stable, healthy, growth-oriented society,” the organisation said.
Fun Dza is working with schools, libraries and youth development groups by providing “exciting books” for teens through its Popularising Reading Programme.
One school that has benefited from the programme is African School for Excellence, a low-cost private school in Tsakane, Ekurhuleni.
English curriculum developer at the school, Thato Malele, told Sowetan that because the school is a low-cost private school, it does not generate a lot of revenue from school fees to afford everything it needs. She said the school lacked books the pupils could relate to, and that even donated second-hand books it got were not enough.
Malele said life had become fun for the pupils since the school became a beneficiary of Fun Dza.
“The kids love the books and what makes them more fun is that they relate to the content because they are based on things they are familiar with [in their township lives], and about teenagehood.”
Malale said the pupils were hooked on the books and even took them home to read.