As a large portion of the population of South Africa does not participate in the Cape Town Book Fair’s activities, LitCam and the fair organisers planned to build up and support Reading and Learning Rooms in the townships of Kayelitsha and Mfuleni.

LitCam launched the “Reading and Learning Rooms” project together with our cooperation partners, the Cape Town Book Fair, VPUU, Women for Peace and UWC, with an opening event on Thursday, 29 July in the Women for Peace Nobantu Centre in Mfuleni.

At the same time, two other Reading and Learning (RaL) Rooms opened in Khayelitsha. This enabled residents of the townships to attend readings and thereby indirectly take part in the Cape Town Book Fair for the first time. The Reading and Learning Rooms will be equipped with books and learning materials. Further readings, workshops and learning sessions will be organised for at least one year.

LitCam will also equip the RaL Rooms with additional educational technology and material. The project aims to promote reading and writing, but also to support the children and youth in the township with more opportunities to learn, particularly in the field of life skills. LitCam is therefore cooperating with the Siemens Foundation to provide Discovery Boxes for children. There will also be one teacher who will provide additional lessons at a special time in each of the RaL Rooms.

The first three “Reading and Learning Rooms”

The first “Reading and Learning Room” will be situated at the Western Forecourt Khayelitsha station. The 18-square-metre RaL Room will be used by the neighbourhood patrol, which employs 200 people. Here they will have the chance to read books and use the learning tools provided. For this RaL Room, our target group is “functionally illiterate adults”. Therefore, we aim to provide rather “easy to read” books.

The second RaL Room will be a 14 square-metre container, situated near a nursery/kindergarten in Monwabisi Park. A VPUU secretary will be in charge of the books and learning tools. The women from the crèche can borrow books and tools for the children and bring them back to the RaL Room. They can also read books there on site. We will provide the RaL Room with children’s books, picture books and some pedagogical material for the nursery staff. There will also be Discovery Boxes, as well as adequate instruction workshops for the boxes.

The third RaL Room will be built up in the Women for Peace Centre in Mfuleni. The target group there will be families and mothers with children. In October, the first library in the township Khayelitsha will open. LitCam will cooperate with the library and implement one Reading and Learning Room there, as well. Four other RaL Rooms will be built up in Khayelitsha by October.

Writing competition “Football moments – short stories from the townships”

A highlight of the opening event on Thursday, 29 July, was the announcement of the writing contest “Football moments – short stories from the townships”. All children and young people, as well as adults from the townships, are invited to participate. Awards will be given to the best short stories from six different groups: children 6-10, children 10-14 and young adults 14-18, as well as from the group of women and the group of men. In tandem with the writing contest, there will also be “How to write a short story” workshops in the “Reading and Learning Rooms”.

Entry deadline for submitting stories will be 31 January 2011. There will be a second announcement of the writing contest in October at the opening of the new library in Kayelitsha.

A jury of two publishers, one author, as well as representatives from the Cape Town Book Fair and LitCam will select the winner. There will be six main prizes. The winner will be presented at the Cape Town Book Fair in 2011. The stories will be published in a book.

Kindly supported by Siemens Stiftung