Puku is taking its education and training offerings digital! We are starting with our highly regarded 3-day face-to-face workshop on reviewing children’s literature. Held in English for years, with a preliminary pilot in Setswana, Puku was able, through its African Publishing Innovation award funded by the International Publishing Association and Dubai Cares in 2019, to pilot its review and writing workshops in first Nguni languages and then in Sotho languages. The successful results were upgraded yet distinct courses in reviewing children’s literature, and in writing literature for the African child.
2021’s funding from the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme (PESP) has allowed Puku to redesign the book review workshop into a 10-lesson course, then take that template to produce the tutorial on YouTube entirely in isiXhosa. This serves as a pilot course and Puku is actively seeking funding to produce the children’s review course in all indigenous languages and to create much more content in our languages on YouTube, a platform reaches 95% of the internet’s population.While YouTubes top-performing countries reflect that global diversity, South Africa’s users are not yet even in the top 90 countries which are represented by over 80 languages. Indeed, while Africa is the second-most populous continent (16% of the world’s population), we rarely feature on the most viewed lists. Puku thinks all this is mainly a language barrier and that if we begin to communicate with people in their own languages, they will want to listen. Puku also sees the digital universe as a significant avenue to the preservation and promotion of indigenous languages.
Our first children’s literature review course in isiXhosa is made up of ten lessons ranging from 4-12 minutes each. Lesson topics range from “Cultural Competency: Affirming the African Child” to “Understanding Book Levels”, and from “How to Write a Hook” to “Crafting Praise & Critique”. All in isXhosa. As we continue to upload lessons, we invite you to visit the Puku YouTube Channel, to click the Subscribe and Like buttons, to comment, and to share our videos with your networks.
This project might even be a world first!
Find out more about the ten lessons covered in Puku’s YouTube book review course by watching this video (embdded below) from Puku’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaAUGhelbiqrsppZbdL3Lig
