Photo by Victor Dlamini

Zakes Mda is a prolific novelist, playwright and filmmaker who has received numerous awards, including the M-Net Book Prize for his monumental novel Ways of Dying, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize for The Heart of Redness. He also received the Zora Neal Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award in 2003. He commutes between the USA, where he is a Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Theory at Ohio University, and South Africa, where he runs a beekeeping project in the Eastern Cape, and a dramaturge at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg. He is Founder and Trustee of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, where he trains HIV positive people to write. Mda’s novels, The Heart of Redness, won the 2001 Commonwealth Writers Prize, Africa Region, and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Ways of Dying won the Olive Schreiner and M-Net Book Prizes, 1997, and has since been adapted into a play, a jazz opera and a Broadway production. His other novels include Black Diamond, 2009, Cion 2007, The Whale Caller, 2005, and The Madonna of Excelsior, 2002.

help2read is very excited to have such an inspiring person as our ambassador!

If you would like to visit or get in touch you can find us at:  1st Floor Annlin Forum, 3 Dorothea Road, Annlin, Pretoria or on 012 752 9984.

However, when the scheme launched in 2005 with a handful of volunteers, Mr Moss, 75, would never have imagined its success.

Today it has recruited close to 700 helpers working with children at more than 110 schools in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

In the coming weeks the retired chartered surveyor is hoping the department for education in South Africa will agree to take the project to a further 800 schools.

Mr Moss, who lives in Pilgrim’s Lane, said: “I don’t know about world domination, but if I can help or raise the money for it then why not?

“There are too many children missing out on something like this to ever feel like we are doing enough.

“It’s not just about reading, it’s also about lifting their self-esteem. Before they thought something was wrong with them because they couldn’t read.

“Normally these children don’t have a literate adult in their lives because their parents have died or something else has happened. It’s all the adversity you get here in England then multiply it by 10,000.”

When Mr Moss wound down some of his business interests a few years ago, he threw his energy into teaching reading at Holy Trinity Primary in Swiss Cottage.

A regular visitor to South Africa, the political upheaval in the wake of the fall of the apartheid regime caught Mr Moss’s imagination.

After a chance meeting with a confidant of Nelson Mandela, he was taken to a township on the outskirts of Cape Town where he witnessed the difficulties facing the new generation.

“My feeling was that anything one could do for South Africa, one should,” said Mr Moss.

“Nelson Mandela’s message was something I felt I wanted to support and it needed all the help it could get because there were plenty of enemies to the Rainbow Nation inside and outside the country at the time.”

http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/hampstead_man_helps_8_000_children_learn_to_read_in_south_africa_1_1705184

The partnership with Falken is a perfect fit, as she is passionate about literacy and believes that children should be taught the importance of reading from an early age. “I believe that giving children the gift of exploring and discovering the written word is equal to giving them the thumbs up to imagine and dream. In that spirit, it is an honour for me to be part of this programme.” Living this example, Falken and her four-year old daughter read together before bedtime every night.  

Our latest ambassador is also an avid blogger and columnist who is currently also doing an MBA through the University of Cape Town. Apart from her partnership with help2read, Falken is driven by going good. She is a goodwill ambassador for the Heart and Stroke Foundation and Wellness SA. She has also embarked on a relationship with WWF South Africa, working with them on their planet-saving initiatives.

To get to know our new ambassador a little better we’ve compiled a little Q&A for her:

help2read: How did you get to love reading as much as you do?

Saskia: Growing up, my grandfather had a bookshelf behind his bedroom door and whenever we complained about being bored we would be told to go grab a book from the old, dusty and mysterious shelf. Then my mom also worked for various publishers so we always had a huge variety of books at our disposal. I love that books allow you to escape to unknown lands, meet unknown people and experience life without ever having to leave your bedroom.

help2read: What was your favourite book as a child?

Saskia: It would have to be "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott.  I had a little paperback copy that I read over and over and over again. As an only child, it gave me a window into being a part of a big family and having sisters that would be at your side through thick and thin.

help2read: What do you enjoy reading now and do you have an all time favourite book?

Saskia: I have a weakness for self-help books *blush*, so I have many on my bookshelf.  At the moment I'm very interested in forgiveness the vulnerability that one needs to go there so I'm reading a very interesting read by Shame Researcher Brene Brown called "The gifts of imperfection". My all time favourite book is a novel though - I read it when I was a teen and it still rates the most powerful books on my list of must-reads, it's "The Colour Purple" by Alice Walker.

help2read:  What author would you most like to meet dead or alive?

Saskia: I haven't really given this much thought because I always think of the authors as a conduit for the story and it's really the story that captures my imagination and thoughts most, but I do believe a conversation with Anjie Krog would make for a fascinating and interesting conversation.

help2read:  Would you ever consider writing a book and what would you title it?

Saskia: Sjoe, I'd have to give this some thought.

For more information see Saskia’s full bio here

Through this new partnership, Cape Town Ajax and help2read hope to spread this campaign and reach many more children. Cape Town Ajax has been involved with workshops in this township community for a number of years. Since July 2010 help2read has been supporting volunteers at Sobambisana School who assist learners one-to-one twice a week with reading. Through the commitment of 30 parent and community volunteers, 75 learners at the school have already been reached by the help2read programme.

This week, these kids' dreams came true when they met their heroes in person!

help2read was invited to the 567 CapeTalk Kieno's Roundtable

It is a goal and passion of 567 CapeTalk to highlight the issues affecting our City, and to hold stakeholders accountable on delivering on their obligations.
567 CapeTalk and the Department of Education have been working together to highlight the plight of struggling schools and celebrating schools, pupils and their teachers who are doing their bit. However the Department of Education needs all the help that they can get. Hence they invited help2read to be part of the discussion to determine how we can best assist the Department of Education by coming up with tangible solutions.

Follow the link to see the video clip of the Round Table:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoUdFz5lJ_g&feature=youtu.be

Shops and businesses close, and for the morning the population does anything from picking up litter to maintaining public buildings and gardens. The coming together of the people to rebuild the country is being described as a post-genocidal miracle. Read the whole blog at tinyurl.com/63bq5jb.

Although we don’t have an official requirement for community service, it’s something South Africa desperately needs. Thamm hopes NGOs will come together to co-ordinate voluntary service for people who would like to contribute in this way. In the meantime, there’s nothing stopping anyone from volunteering a few hours of community service a month.

As Thamm says: “Offering your time or services in order to help others is a rewarding and deeply fulfilling activity. It provides a sense of agency and connectedness, offers an occasion for skills transfer and empowerment as well as the added immediate obvious and visible benefits. If we wish to defeat the forces of division and negativity that are currently being given expression, then it might be time to get up and be seen to be doing something about it.”

If you’re feeling depressed by the dismal results in the nationwide literacy assessments of primary school pupils, and you’d like to help underachieving children learn to read, three organisations in the Western Cape would love your help. A small contribution of time could make an enormous difference to a child’s life.

Help2read trains volunteers then places them in primary schools in their community, where they work one on one with children who are struggling with English reading. All it takes is a one- to two-hour commitment a week, during term time. Find more info at www.help2read.org

Shine Centre is always looking for volunteers who can give an hour-and-a-half weekly to work with individual children in schools. Its latest assessments have shown that in just six months, 105 of the 110 children it works with who were graded “at risk” for literacy are off the danger list. Find it at www.theshinecentre.org.z.

Finally, if you don’t have time but you have books to donate to schools without libraries, the Bookery would love them. And if you’d like to give a few hours of time occasionally, people are always needed to cover books. Go to www.equaleducation.org.za/bookery - Cape Times