Open doors for brighter futures with book drive
"In each page there are words, rhythms, images, smells, colours, and voices that want to come out and touch our lives," said Robin Hood supporter, Gcina Mhlope.
DOCTOR Gcina Mhlophe is a firm supporter of the The Robin Hood Foundation and has thrown her enthusiasm for books behind the NPO’s Love to Read campaign.
The organisation plans to equip and uplift up to 20 rural creches with educational books. Dr Gcina Mhlophe has been writing and performing on stage and screen for more than 20 years. She has written many children’s books as well as adult audience poetry, short stories and plays.
She does her most important work through charismatic performances, working to preserve storytelling as a means of keeping history alive and encouraging South African children to read. She tells her stories in four of South Africa’s languages: English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa. Ma Gcina, as she is fondly known in the community, also heads up Nozincwadi: Mother of books.
“The Nozincwadi Project is about making books come alive, making them exciting. In each page there are words, rhythms, images, smells, colours, and voices that want to come out and touch our lives. Before they were put down on paper and became part of a book, they were all around us, ageless and unique. Now they sit in closed books, yearning for us to let them out, to let them reconnect us with the treasures we continue to overlook in our everyday lives. Literacy and reading are the keys that open the doors to the global village. But sophisticated computers and all sorts of modern forms of media are useless to a country that does not invest in the literacy of its people,” said Gcina.
“This is why I dedicate my creativity and time to make a difference in the lives of rural people, particularly children whose situation might seem hopeless. I’ve been there, that’s where I come from. Reading inspired me to think and dream big. I would like to share this experience with everybody who is feeling despondent with the education system right now. Hard work, vision and reading will make the change.”
To get involved and help make a difference by donating books, e-mail robin hoodfund@telkomsa.net.
