Nal’ibali, the national reading-for-enjoyment campaign, has partnered with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to bring the campaign’s proven approach to literacy development to selected rural schools in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. Focussing on nurturing a love of reading for joy in English and home languages to spark children’s potential and unlock their school learning, the schools’ initiative, titled: ‘Story Powered Schools: A South African Reading Revolution’, is launching with the new school year this January.

The Nal’ibali campaign is built on the simple logic that a well-established culture of reading can be a real game-changer for education in South Africa: “Indeed, research has shown a direct link between reading for pleasure and children’s school success. We’ve seen evidence of this in the 1120 reading clubs we work with across the country and are excited to be putting stories into the hearts of the classrooms that need them most,” says Jade Jacobsohn, Managing Director at Nal’ibali.