Improving Literacy in Africa

Edu Fun’s mission is to improve English literacy. We teach learners in grades 2 & 3 at Diepsloot Combined School (DCS) in the informal settlement of Diepsloot, South Africa to read using the Phono-Graphix Reading Method.

We have been working with a group of unemployed youth who have all completed their training and will soon be certified Phono-Graphix Tutors.  The tutors did an amazing job during the Winter school holidays in June/July where they ran our Holiday Buddy Reader, Sports, Art and Dance programme. 120 children participated in the programme and we were very lucky to have between 60 and 80 volunteers on any given day which meant that every child was able to have 1:1 reading instruction for one hour each day and then participated in other activities for the rest of the day. 

Most of the learners from the school benefit from the school’s feeding scheme during the term, which means that they don't get regular meals during school holidays. During this programme every child who participated received breakfast, lunch as well as snacks and drinks throughout the day. Each child was also given a book to take home and the reactions when they realised that they could take the book home with them were priceless!

We are trying to replicate this holiday programme on a weekly basis in the form of  a “homework” club where the most vulnerable children at the school, several of whom are from child headed homes come to our training hub every Wednesday afternoon, receive a meal, play board games, do homework, have access to the internet and get to chat to their friends as well as our tutors. This project costs about R2000 (Approx $125) to run per month. This is not something that we budgeted for, but we would really like to keep it going as it’s filling a void in the learners’ lives and keeping them actively engaged in recreational and educational activities after school on at least one day and gives them a sense of community and family.

We have been working with 200 Grade 3 learners since March of this year who have all benefitted from one-to-one instruction twice a week.  The tutors have gained a lot of experience and have now added another 200 kids to their case load as we have started to work with all the Grade 2 leaners at DCS as well. 

This means that we've managed to close some of the gaps caused by Covid. We have recruited more volunteers as a result, however we would love to start training and employing more local youth so that we can multiply our impact, replicate the project in other schools in Diepsloot and employ more unemployed youth who are proving to be very competent reading tutors and are able to provide better for their own families as a result of the allowance they receive.

Many tutors are teaching their own children to read as well as their younger siblings over and above the work they do with us and are even applying the method to other languages … so Phono-Graphix is the gift that keeps giving and is being passed down to the next generation. 

There are 6 primary schools in Diepsloot and we hope to add one more school to our programme each year over the next 5 years.  In order for the programme to work effectively, we need to employ a minimum of 10 tutors at each school.

The cost per tutor in terms of their training as well as their monthly stipend over 9 months is approximately R33 000 per tutor for the year. This is the equivalent $2200 per tutor, which works out to less than $200 dollars per tutor per month which includes all their training, materials and stipend as well as all the stationery and educational material for the 25 to 30 children that each tutor would be responsible for teaching one-on-one on a weekly basis.  

 
We are grateful for the continued support that we get from the GlobalGiving platform. Any of your donations will go a long way to assist us in achieving our vision for this year and beyond.

Links:

• A few videos of the event - much excitement during Buddy Reading
• Our Edu Fun Website

Edu Fun’s mission is to improve English literacy. We teach learners in grades 2 & 3 at Diepsloot Combined School in the informal settlement of Diepsloot, South Africa.

We are currently addressing all the gaps in learning and literacy development caused by the lockdowns during the Pandemic. We will endeavour to teach 400 Grade 3 & 3 kids to read this year as opposed to our usual goal of 200 Grade 2 children because most of these kids did not attend school at all in 2020 and only attending 50% of the time in 2021. Even though schools are getting back to “normal” in terms of children attending 100% of the time, 100% also means up to 70 children in one class which makes learning to read that much more challenging.

We are also nowhere near back to “normal” in terms of the volunteers who were joining us on a regular basis to teach reading pre-covid as they have been concerned about their own health and safety as well as that of their families. The recent violence and protest action in Diepsloot has been yet another deterrent.

However, we are grateful that we have been able to train a group of unemployed local youth from Diepsloot to teach reading using the Phono-Graphix Reading method. We’re still in the early stages of our 2022 programme which got off to a good start on 1 March. We started working with approximately 200 Grade 3 learners at various ability levels.

Most of the learners who we assessed are at least a year behind with their reading and were assessed to start working at the beginning of the programme where the focus is on learning to read 3 sound words such as cat, cot, pot etc.

We are now starting to assess all the Grade 2 learners and will hopefully have enough funding to be able to train and employ more local youth who earn a small stipend as a token of appreciation for the community work that they are doing. This project is a win-win because it not only achieves our goal of teaching children to read, but also assists young adults to develop a new skill whilst earning a small allowance to assist their families.

Our expenses mainly comprise paying stipends for these young tutors and printing and stationery costs.

The cost per tutor in terms of their training as well as their monthly stipend over 9 months is approximately R33 000 per tutor for the year. This is the equivalent $2200 per tutor, which works out to less than $200 dollars per tutor per month which includes all their training, materials and stipend as well as all the stationery and educational material for the 25 children that each tutor would be responsible for t4eaching one-one on a weekly basis between now and the end of the year South African academic year in December.

We are grateful for the continued support that we get from the GlobalGiving platform. Any of your donations will go a long way to assist us in achieving our vision for this year and beyond.

Links:

• Edu Fun's Website
• Edu Fun Facebook page