Bridget McNulty

Literacy for All update -

// February 16th, 2009 // Cape Town, Life (and the living of it)

Do you remember me writing about the fabulous Literacy for All project?
They provide books to young students in all eleven official languages, thereby increasing the likelihood that the students will grow to love books and enjoy reading – obviously a cause very close to my heart! I approached them because I wanted to offer a donation for their work, and they’ve replied with a specific school in desperate need. Here’s what they have to say…

“The answer seems to be to help a small school in the little town of Philadelphia which is about 25 km north of Cape Town. The contact was made at the request of a school subject advisor who is very supportive of our work. She felt this school, which is a very poor rural school with an excellent headmaster and enthusiastic staff would really appreciate and benefit from the help we could give. They have parallel Xhosa and Afrikaans classes (one of each for each of Grades 1 – 3.) From Grade 4 the numbers are smaller and they have only one class per grade and try to teach in English! No doubt English is the second language of the teacher as well. So it is not hard to see how problematic the literacy enterprise is in these circumstances.

We think that having a small to medium sized project like this (for donors giving say R50 to R5000) would provide a realistic target that would not take too long to reach and would be more personal.”