Book Dash.
Nationally, across South Africa.
December 26th 2023
Book Dash
Buchanan Square, 160 Sir Lowry Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town, 7925, South Africa
Our vision is for every child to own one hundred books by the age of five. To that end, Book Dash gathers creative volunteers to create new African storybooks that anyone can freely print, translate and distribute. We also print and distribute the books to families and children across the country for free.
Julia Norrish
Director
www.bookdash.org
NPO, NGO
3 employees
Book Dash.
Nationally, across South Africa.
2014
Our vision is for every child to own one hundred books by the age of five.
We apply for funding grants from a variety of sources, most notably corporate social investment and family philanthropic trusts and foundations. This way we can make sure our books are free to the end user (the families and children we support). We also generate income by practicing pooled-procurement i.e printing our books at scale and offering these at low prices to partner organisations who have budgets for resources. The books are still then distributed to children for free.
We distribute books across all of the nine provinces in South Africa. Additionally our content is used in countries across the world including: India, France, United Kingdom, India, Nigeria, Angola, Asia.
Yes, we are registered with the South African Government as an NPO. The purpose of this programme is not to make profit. Our aim is to provide books to the end user for free.
None.
Not consistent. Our geographic reach differs between the provinces due to Book Dash being based in the Western Cape a large number of our funders/partners are also from this region as we have a stronger presence. We also have a stronger presence in Gauteng due to holding a book making event in the region once a year. However, we aim to partner with organisations who are involved across all different provinces. Because we rely on our distribution partners (early childhood development organisations and literacy organisations) to distribute the books to children, there are regional differences in exactly how this is carried out. It also means we have a stronger presence in areas where there is a higher density of these types of organisations.
We focus our attention to providing books to children who would otherwise not have access to books, particularly in their home language. Our gifting packs include Book Dash’s own books that are suitable to the child’s age, language requirements and context. In addition to their home language children often receive English books too as this is the language of learning from Grade 4 onwards in South Africa and it is beneficial to be exposed early.
Yes. Our primary focus is to put physical books into the homes of children (as research shows the presence of books in the home has extremely beneficial effects on reading culture, literacy development and academic attainment). We therefore source funding and use pooled-procurement to ensure the books are offered free to the child and family. We are able to consistently offer/donate a package of 100 books at R1000/£55/€61 to our funders and sponsors. We create our books using a Common Creative BY 4.0 license that allows anyone to use our content for free. This includes adaptations such as translations into languages different languages.
Health clinics (this aspect of our work is growing quickly as we partner with more and more clinics and hospitals!), Gifted by professional partners Library, Hospital, Community centre, Health clinic, School, Other – more details below
Early literacy specialists, librarians, nursery school staff, volunteers, trained community leaders
Our book creation model uses professional illustrators, writers, designers and editors who volunteer their time to create one of our books. The only commitment is to a once-off 12-hour fast-paced book making events called “Book Dashes”, though we find that many re-apply for more! After that we partner with organisations to distribute our books who have volunteers. We do not work directly with any volunteers after the books have been created.
Our program is focused primarily on South African children aged 0 – 5. Our vision is that every child should own one hundred books by the age of five. However, in building the presence and capacity of our organisation and programme, we have focused on targeted groups (mostly small geographic areas). We also specifically target South African children who would not otherwise have access to reading books i.e. lower socio-economic groups. We aim to provide children with storybooks in their home language (there are a limited number of children’s books in African languages) as well as English.
In the last 5 years Book Dash has grown exponentially, so yearly impact has changed each year. Whilst each partner organisation uses the books slightly differently, we know that in the last year we have distributed 300000 books to children to own.
Prenatal, Birth – 6 months, 6 – 12 months, 12 – 24 months, 2-4 years, up to 7 years old.
No. However, due to the nature of our open-licensed content there have been adaptations of our books that have served children with special needs for instance braille books adaptations, sign language adaptations and audio books.
We cater to the eleven official languages of South Africa: English, Afrikaans, isiXhosa, isiZulu, isiSepedi, isiNdebele, Setswana, Sesotho, Siswati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga. Our Creative BY 4.0 license allows anyone to use our content for free. Therefore our books have been adapted and translated into hundreds of languages.
The existing evidence base for the benefits of increased book ownership is extremely strong. Therefore, we chose to focus on tracking our impact, rather than evaluating the impact. However, we do collaborate with our partners to measure the impact of our books (often qualitative feedback) we would like to explore more rigorous evaluations going forward.
