help2read is a developmental organisation which was founded in 2005. Although our beginnings were based on an established UK child literacy charity, over the years the programme has been adapted to meet the needs of South African society. help2read is working to address national development in South Africa in two ways.
Firstly, help2read addresses child literacy, a key component to national development. help2read works in public primary schools with learners in grades 2-4 who are struggling with literacy. We pair each learner with a trained volunteer from the community who provides twice weekly one-on-one tutoring.
Secondly, help2read address the lack of skills development and unemployment statistics within the adult South African population. We are currently piloting a version of our programme in which we specifically recruit literate, unemployed adults. This pilot includes extended skills development trainings and other incentives for our Literacy Tutors who then in turn help a larger amount of struggling learners than those volunteers in our standard programme.
help2read currently operates in communities throughout the Western Cape and parts of Gauteng using a largely volunteer workforce. We are currently active in 100s of schools and have helped thousands of children. We are actively working on expanding our programme to the more rural provinces of South Africa.
Our vision
An empowered Africa where everyone is literate.
Our mission
Our mission is to motivate the literate adult population to pass on their skills to the next generation, helping children to succeed in education and be confident, self assured individuals.
Our model
help2read’s model is straight forward and effective. Working in developing countries, we recruit, train and support literate adult volunteers from local communities to help disadvantaged primary school children who struggle to read.
The help2read volunteers work one-on-one basis with each child for two 30 minute sessions per week. The volunteers are provided with help2read book boxes which contain ability-appropriate reading material, workbooks, dictionaries, stationary, and pens/pencils. These book boxes provide all the resources for the volunteer to follow the help2read methodology which emphasises working at the speed of the child.
www.help2read.org