Book Dash believes that every child should own 100 books by the age of 5 so to make that happen, they hand out free books and just hit 1 million!
South Africa (24 November 2020) – To create a nation of lifelong readers and support literacy among youth, research shows that every child should own and have access to storybooks. Yet, books are expensive, often seen as a luxury, and owning just one storybook is out of the reach of millions of South African children.
Enter Book Dash, a literacy awareness organisation that creates and distributes storybooks to children in need.
“Research shows that owning books is a key factor in early development and academic success: more important than socio-economic status and equaled only by parents’ level of education.
By working together to increase book ownership among South African children, we could effectively disrupt a cycle of inequality for good. In addition to creating and publishing new books, we source the funding to print hundreds and thousands of copies to give freely to children through partner organisations.”
Book Dash is a registered non-profit organisation and has an innovative model to create and share new, quality South African children’s books that are highly affordable. Over the past few years, more than 128 original storybooks, across eleven indigenous languages, have been created by volunteer creative teams at 12-hour events called Book Dashes. More than 650 000 books have been printed and put in the small hands of young children at the cost of as little as R10 a book.
The organisation relies on donations from some incredible sponsors so that children can access the books for free. Last year Book Dash partnered up with The Santa Shoebox Project to ensure each box purchased as a digital option received a Book Dash book.
This year, they continued the partnership, and it is how Book Dash has been able to celebrate their 1 million books today!
This is what a million looks like!
Today we announce officially that one million physical copies of #BookDash books have been put into children’s hands.
The cherry on top is that the one millionth book went to a child in the one millionth @SantaShoebox.#everychild100book pic.twitter.com/HchpYerdM5
— Book Dash (@bookdash) November 24, 2020
You can find out more about Book Dash via their website here.
by 