Robin Hood Foundation launches Love to Read campaign

SHOWING her support for The Robin Hood Foundation’s (RHF) Love to Read campaign in which they plan to equip and uplift up to 20 rural creches with educational books, is renowned poet and children’s book author, Dr Gcina Mhlophe.

A dear friend of the foundation, Dr Mhlophe has been writing and performing on stage and screen for over 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, including English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa.

Ma Gcina, as she is fondly known, 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. They can help confirm our wishes, values and universal concerns. In today’s world literacy and reading is the key that opens the door 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, Gcina Mhlophe, 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.”

Chairman and founder of RHF, Cindy Norcott: “We believe education is the main key to eradicating poverty and we would like to focus a large amount of attention on early childhood development in 2017 as this is the most important area to get the foundations right for small children to be able to learn and grow to their full potential.”

If you’d like to get involved and help make a difference, email robinhoodfund@telkomsa.net today for more details.

 
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