Published in the Sunday World (03/06/2018), Daily Dispatch (04/-6/2018), Herald (07/06/2018)

By Carla Lever

Biblionef are the only national organisation that make books available to children in all eleven of our national languages. That’s no mean feat! How do you manage to source quality, exciting content across such a wide range of languages?

We actually get our books from a variety of sources, including purchasing or accepting donations.

Early in 1999, when we discovered how scarce storybooks in all African languages were, the Founder of Biblionef, Max Vegelin Van Claerbergen, suggested we commission publishers to print some of the most popular titles we had in South Africa into indigenous languages.

Thanks to generous funding, we’ve been able to print 93 titles in indigenous languages!

We really believe in making high quality books with lots of colourful illustrations and we’re proud of the fact that the majority of our books are locally written, illustrated and produced – in fact, our latest book was Kgalagadi Tales in all 11 languages, funded by the Lotto.

Why do you believe so passionately that access to books is the key to a child’s future?

Books really can change your life.

They open your mind and that changes your attitude towards life and the world around you. Once you taste the joy books bring you, you’ll become a life-long reader and readers are normally good citizens who can act wisely.

What are some of the impacts and success stories that have made you the proudest over Biblionef’s years of operation?

We get a lot of amazing responses from people at schools, some of whom have never had books donated before. A principal heard about how we have more than 300 isiXhosa books and he actually drove here after school just to look at and touch them. He had tears in his eyes because he’d never seen so many books that weren’t textbooks in his mother tongue language. What a moment!

Studies have shown that boys often have significantly lower reading skills than girls at school. How can we change that, together?

We need to offer them books that cover topics that they are interested in!

Boys – like girls – have a wide range of interests, but let’s make sure we have great stories about football, boxing, local heroes and so on.

At Biblionef, we have six books that cover a soccer story, we have books about Nelson Mandela growing up as a herd boy as well as a children’s version of Long Walk to Freedom.

Can any public organisation apply to receive books from Biblionef?

Any children’s organisation that has a need for books in mother tongue but not the means to get them can apply….

Read more here…