SOWETAN | Vahluri one of the good stories to tell

SA has an abundance of good news stories that inspire hope amid all the challenges our country faces.

Take for example the story of Bianca Ledwaba, one of five volunteers who are determined to foster the culture of reading among children in a rural Limpopo village through Vahluri Reading Project. Her story, which we published in this newspaper last week, shows the way in how we all can do our bit to improve literacy and encourage the culture of reading.

The initiative, established in 2012, offers reading classes to children from Mandela village in GaMashashane on Saturdays, relying on donations of books.

“We share stories. The greatest aim is to expose them [children] to all forms of literature, share stories with them, and help them to love reading, everything, whether a newspaper or an article, just about anything,” said Ledwaba.

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study published last year underlined the problems faced by our education system when it revealed that 81% of grade 4 pupils could not read for meaning.

The study, which surveyed more than 50 countries, further found that 56% of SA grade 6 pupils cannot read for meaning when tested on the same grade 4 evaluation.

It is in this context that we ought to understand the significance and potential impact of Vahluri Reading Project and the inspirational work of the volunteers behind it.

Of course, this initiative represents a mere drop in an ocean in changing the situation reflected in the study, but it is a good start that we should encourage in many of our communities.  

It has been established that children with better reading skills perform well in their learning and show better comprehension of things. That Ledwaba and her fellow volunteers chose to give these crucial reading skills to those in vulnerable communities where there are no libraries is worthy of recognising and highlighting.

When children are not reading on weekends, they are turning to other things that are not good for their development into adulthood. There can be nothing more important today than when pupils are encouraged to read to develop critical thinking skills they will need later in life.

With the myriad problems SA faces, the next generation will have to muster the art of problem-solving to prosper and that journey starts with initiatives like Vahluri.