To increase access for parents and educators to the popular bilingual children’s literacy resource, the Nal’ibali reading-for-enjoyment supplement, Times Media will be moving the weekly publication to two new newspaper titles as of 13 April.
Previously published in The Sowetan in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State, the supplement will now appear every Sunday in the Sunday World, and will be moving from The Times to the Sunday Times Express in the Western Cape. The supplement will remain in the Daily Dispatch and The Herald in the Eastern Cape will continue to be published during term times.
Nal’ibali, a national reading-for-enjoyment campaign driven by the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA) in partnership with the Times Media Group, was initiated in 2012 to grow a love of stories and reading among children and the adults in their lives. The supplement contains stories to read as well as information to help make this a reality. To date, the partnership has produced more than 11-million supplements, in combinations of English-Sesotho, English-Afrikaans, English-isiXhosa and English-isiZulu, with plans to expand to all 11 languages once additional funding is secured.
“Promoting reading for enjoyment and providing access to children’s literacy material in their mother tongues is hugely important to Times Media as a partner in the Nal’ibali campaign. When research showed that by moving, particularly to Sunday World, we would be providing access to more educators and parents, as well as to more Sesotho, isiXhosa and isiZulu speakers, we knew that moving was the right decision to make,” says Patti McDonald, publisher of Times Media Education.
