Ubongo co-founder, Nisha Ligon, describes this non-profit social enterprise as the world’s biggest classroom, and with a reach to 17 million learners across sub-Saharan Africa, she’s not wrong. Although Ubongo content is aimed at African children, it is equally relevant to anyone interested in high-quality, multicultural, and entertaining educational resources for children.
I’m fascinated by the simple notion of children authoring stories for other children to read and enjoy – it makes so much sense. In its project, Soma Book Café, went one step further. The four children whose stories were selected by judges consisting of other children and adults worked with published authors, illustrators, designers, and other book professionals to turn their ideas and words into a professional product in print and online. Putting these ideas into practise proved to be a lot more complex than envisaged; delivering thought-provoking learnings to the adults who took on the challenge.
For this blog series, the Early Learning Resource Network is reaching out to authors, editors, illustrators, translators, educators, publishers and other stakeholders who, through their creative endeavours, are working to grow and improve the early learning environment, specifically on the African continent.
These non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which have innovatively adopted open licensing publishing and distribution models and that specialize in solving early literacy challenges in developing nations, were selected along with a list of other initiatives, ‘for their exemplary work in ensuring that children continue to build critical literacy skills.’
Craig Esbeck, Director, Mango Tree Literacy Lab
Early literacy is universally acknowledged to be critical when it comes to the education and development of our children, and their life-long learning. But even in countries where the home language is not a Western language, early literacy teaching is not in that language. This is unfortunate as research shows that children learn to read more effectively if they learn in their mother tongue. Since its inception in 2010, a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Lira, Uganda, the Mango Tree Literacy Lab (MTLL), has worked hard to address this, and to realize their belief that African children have the right to read, write and engage with ideas in a language they know and understand.
Kalamu Ndogo (Little Scribes) is a new book series written by children for children under the auspices of the Soma Book Café Watoto na Vitabu (Children and Books) storytelling hub and Saturday children’s programme. This is a space for children between the ages of six and 13 to hone their reading and storytelling skills. The series is a product of experimental work on how to facilitate children to research and write original stories inspired by Tanzanian storytelling traditions. These stories are also informed by how the children experience contemporary realities and their aspirations beyond the here and now.
As part of their efforts to ensure that every child should own 100 books before the age of five, South African non-profit organization (NPO), Book Dash, recently did a remarkable thing: It created, published and distributed three new books during the national lockdown.
The organization gathered two teams of creative professionals who volunteered to pilot this new virtual Book Dash. Then, making the most of their learning from the past 14 physical events, Book Dash successfully replicated the experience online, with some adjustments.
Guest blog by Dr Nkem Osuigwe, Human Capacity Development & Training Director, AfLIA
Schools may be closed, but children can continue to learn and enjoy reading storybooks during this difficult period. We’ve told you about wonderful places to identify good storybooks in previous blog posts.
In this post, we’re going to tell you about resources for parents and caregivers who want to help their children with learning and reading.
