February 16th is World Read Aloud Day, and iThemba Projects is celebrating the day by collecting isiZulu books so that parents and creche teachers in Sweetwaters have the opportunity to read with the little people in their lives."Reading aloud with children is critical for Early Childhood Development," says Chrissie, Vodacom Change the World volunteer at iThemba. "It lays the foundation for literacy in later years, as well as building social and emotional skills in children. The problem we've run into is that parents in this community do not have access to children's books in isiZulu. It is quite easy to find second-hand English books, but these don't help the many parents in our programmes who don't speak English."
iThemba is tackling this lack of access by raising money to purchase books in isiZulu to form a mini-lending library for parents and creche teachers in their programmes. iThemba's goal is to raise enough to purchase 100 books by the end of February. If they raise more than 100 books, they will be able to use extra books as rewards for parents who are committed to implementing the reading programme at home.
If you are interested in sponsoring a book go to http://onehundredbooks.causevox.com/ The cost to sponsor a book is R60. You can also use this website to create your own mini-fundraising page, should you decide to do something crazy (like swim the midmar mile or run a marathon) to raise money for the books!
News supplied by iThemba Projects.