Nal’ibali officially launched its mobile library, dubbed Story Power in Motion, at Khayelitsha library, Site B, on Friday May 31.
Community leaders, government representative and dignified delegates from various sectors all gathered at the premises of the library to attend the ceremony. The organisation will also be launching three mobile libraries in townships in KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Gauteng.
The mobile library is loaded with reading materials aimed at promoting a culture of reading for enjoyment. But most importantly, the organisation strives to ensure that it increases access to children ‘s books for those living beyond the easy reach of a library through a set weekly route, and fun public literacy events.
The mobile library drivers, who are Nal’ibali literacy mentors, will help young members to select books by making suggestions, introducing them to different genres and styles, and engaging them through storytelling and other fun literacy-related activities such as songs and games.
Head of programmes at Nal’ibali, Nompumelelo Prusent, said reading for enjoyment was a critical part of children’s school success, but many families didn’t have access to a wide selection of books, or had an established culture of reading for leisure.
Ms Prusent said choice was a key component in developing children’s reading behaviour and access to reading materials in languages they understood was critical. Furthermore, she said, children required role models who value reading, as well as regular opportunities to read, write and share stories alone and with others. “We believe every child should have the opportunity to reach their potential by falling in love with books and stories. This year alone we hope to reach at least 4 000 adults and children through events hosted at our mobile library and to sign up a further 2000 library members. “We want to make reading fun before anything else. If children read for fun then they would start reading more,” she said. Ms Prusent said they had also noted that many children were reading just for the sake of reading and were not reading for understanding. She said they were rhyming through words not really grasping the content of what they were reading.
She said one of their strategies was to promote indigenous languages before they could then start pushing children to read in other languages. This, she said, was important as it enabled children to master their own languages before starting to read other languages.
Senior librarian at Khayelitsha Site B, Vuyokwazi Jambathwa, said she was glad that the initiative started with her library. Ms Jambathwa said promoting reading and partnering with different organisations had always been important to them.
Khayelitsha police station’s Captain Mthandazo Mncanca said SAPS would do everything in its power to ensure that when the mobile library moved to different places in the community, it would be monitored.