In the famous words of American philosopher William James, it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky. Read to Rise founders Athol Williams and Taryn Lock resonated with these words, they knew that illiteracy is a huge problem in South Africa and that in order for children to rise they needed to be equipped with the skill to read.

The dynamic duo is passionate about education and educating others because they have seen what education has done for them. Williams holds degrees from some of the top universities in the world – MIT, London Business School, LSE, Harvard and Oxford University. He is doing his PhD in Political Theory at Oxford University. Lock has an honors degree in Mathematics from WITS University.

The idea of Read to Rise came into Athol’s mind when he was driving past his old neighborhood Mitchells Plain and he saw how the area was still poverty stricken “I noticed how our people where still not free as they were still being oppressed by poverty”, explained Williams. He told himself that through education and reading he will help his community rise.

The husband and wife team wrote, illustrated and published a children’s book called Oaky and the Sun. Athol and Lock said “The overwhelming reactions of the children inspired us to keep on spreading the story of Oaky and the Sun and hence the NPO READ to RISE was born”. Read to Rise promotes youth literacy in under-resourced communities in South Africa. They do this by providing books and having interactive sessions with learners. The team felt that they could do more than just drop off books, so they place Mini-Libraries with 50 new readers in every class.

Lock says, “To date, we have visited over 3,600 classes in Mitchells Plain and Soweto and given out over 160,000 new books”. In as much as this is an impressive number, the NPO is always looking for an extra helping hand because there can never be enough books in the world to educate a nation.

To help change a child’s life, please visit the Read to Rise website and make a donation : https://www.readtorise.co.za/

Partner of Read to Rise, Roscoe Williams, joine Benito Vergotine in conversation on Wednesday 31 July.

Listen to the conversation here: Read to Rise