Great news on our Christmas Book Campaign. Thanks to your generosity we managed to obtain an entire library’s worth of books, in fact just under 300 titles! That works out as 32 Sets, 17 Shelves, 3 Cases and 2 Crates. These books will go into a new school library at Njijini JSS, close to Letticia Tshelana’s drop in centre in the Eastern Cape in the next couple of months when the headmaster and teachers have made their final selection. We’ll be sure to let you know when the shelves are finally filled and post a few photos of the children benefiting from your kindness.
This is a fantastic step forward, as in most of the rural communities where we work, school bookshelves are completely empty. Literacy among African children is a growing concern and 79% of South African public schools do not have libraries.
The campaign was supported by Professor Genevieve Hart, from the University of the Western Cape, who had this to say: “If you want to help a school, help it with its library. Research from across the world shows that good schools have libraries. It doesn’t have to be an expensive building; it can be a cosy classroom corner. It’s a space where children have a choice of attractive books, where they can lose themselves to find out about themselves – and the rest of the world. Again, research shows that children who read well do well in all their subjects. But to read well they have to read a lot. To read a lot they must like reading. And to like reading they must have access to books they can enjoy and make sense of. Books stretch their imaginations, their emotions and their intellects. They are the way to improve our schools – and our future.”
A whole new library on its way to the Eastern Cape.