Improving Literacy in Africa

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