We provide professional development of teachers through the following avenues: 

• Developing early literacy content that is appropriate to different age groups with different needs;
• Providing quality training, coaching and mentoring to teachers, heads of department, and subject advisors on early grade reading, specialising in African languages;
• Empowering our own staff with up-to-date skills training on early grade reading theories and practice.

Our focus areas are language and literacy content development, specialising in mother tongue or African indigenous languages, and English Second Language (ESL).

Nal’ibali (isiXhosa for “here’s the story”) is South Africa’s reading-for-enjoyment campaign. It makes use of reading and storytelling in home languages as well as English to support children’s literacy learning and school success. It is one of the biggest literacy-based nongovernmental organisations in South Africa. It was initiated in 2012 by the DG Murray Trust and the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA). 

Nal’ibali is built on the simple logic that a well-established culture of reading can be a real game-changer for education in South Africa. Literacy skills are a strong predictor of future academic success in all subjects – and children who regularly read and hear engaging stories, in languages they understand, are well equipped and motivated to learn to read and write. A significant body of research reinforces the link between reading for pleasure and improved outcomes for children. 

Shine Literacy seeks to create more reading opportunities for children in schools and in the greater community, working with schools directly to develop approaches that are relevant, effective and sustainable. Their main focus as an organisation is foundational phase literacy. 

Despite considerable government and private investment into the formal teaching and learning of literacy at schools, as well as the informal promotion of literacy in communities, the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) found that eight out of 10 or 78% of South African children in grade four could not read for meaning in any language. The same study ranked South Africa last out of 50 countries for literacy. Volkswagen SA has been on a journey since 2015 to ensure that children in Uitenhage are functionally literate by the end of grade three. The company’s approach to this focus area has expanded from the recognition that literacy is the cornerstone of quality education and the gateway to numerical competency, to advocating for the support of literacy as a social justice imperative.

Wordworks deliver resource-based training and capacity building for individuals, schools, ECD centres, organisations and institutions to use our materials and to implement early language and literacy programmes in their communities. We encourage and support partners to integrate programmes into their existing work, monitor programme implementation, share learning and build their capacity to become trainers. 

The Western Cape identified the unacceptably low literacy levels in their schools as a cause for major concern, since the literacy levels in South African schools are among the lowest globally. This resulted in the birth of Growsmart, an annual inter-school literacy competition aimed at changing awareness and learning behaviour in the school community and tangibly benefiting previously disadvantaged schools and learners, sponsored by Growthpoint.

• In order to effectively run the competition, Growthpoint engages various stakeholders.
• The winning school receives an iSchool Africa iPad Learning Lab to the value of R 250 000.
• In February 2014, a new element was added to Growsmart which takes the literacy initiative one step further – that of a story writing competition.
• Ongoing monitoring and evaluation take place both during the competition and in the form of long-term intervention at the winning school.

The Volkswagen Community Trust’s Literacy Programme was launched in 2015. To establish what would be required by such a programme, Volkswagen consulted with key non-profit organisations (NPO) in the sector, universities and academics, the Department of Basic Education, parents, teachers, school governing bodies and the community at large.

Using the results and recommendations indicated in the study, Volkswagen has designed and implemented a comprehensive literacy intervention in five Uitenhage primary schools. The goal of the project is to ensure that learners are functionally literate by the time they reach age 10, or grade 3.