The Big Give Christmas Challenge launches on 28th November which happens to be #GivingTuesday.  For one week November 28th until December 5th, all donations made through the Big Give UK platform will be matched in £££s by the Big Give.

We have been awarded a matching pot of £35,000 by our Charity Champions – The Waterloo Foundation and the Brenley Trust – and if we are successful in securing individual giving, will raise a total of £70,000 which will help fund the expansion of our Literacy Tutor programme to an entire new community, reaching over 1,000 more children in 2018.

We would love to know if you would be willing to get behind this campaign.  Every £1 will be matched to the target and will help us to reach our target.  By making a pledge to give and helping us spread the word, we are sure to reach this goal. It costs just £5 per reading contact session per child in our Literacy Tutor Programme.  Your £5 will thus help us give two young child the help they need to learn to read, changing their lives for good. Forever.  By pledging now we can send you a reminder email at the start of the match, or accept a post-dated cheque to ensure that your donation is matched – it’s all very exciting. Last year we raised almost £60K and you can read below the difference it made.

Excitingly, this year is the first year that the campaign is also running on a South African ZAR based platform through the giving portal GivenGain. This allows our South Africa based supporters to donate in RRRs and get matched in RRRs. If you are willing to help us, please also share the news and the link with anyone in your networks who might like to take part.

As ever, thank you for your continued and heart felt commitment to changing the future for the children of South Africa.

With best wishes

Zofia Sochanik
Relationship Manager

+44 (0) 7825 871 839

www.help2read.org/donate

Follow us on Twitter @help2read

Join us on Facebook facebook.com/help2read

Here’s what we did with the Big Give support we received last year:

In November 2016 generous Big Give donors and our pledge and charity champions, the Waterloo Foundation and the Brenley Trust generously committed £56,000 to support our work engaging 20 young adults from Wemmershoek Township with the dual objective of developing their employability and skills whilst providing dedicated one-on-one reading help and literacy skills development support for learners in this under resourced township community.

Our aims were to:

  • to recruit and train 20 youth as Literacy Tutors to provide reading help and develop literacy skills and a love of reading in primary school children attending the township State school;
  • to develop the professional and personal skills of our Literacy Tutors to increase their career choices and employment opportunities in the future; and
  • to establish safe, educational and recreational community based infrastructure in the form of after school and holiday community reading clubs for young children in Wemmershoek township.

Our achievements include

  • We trained 41 young people in Wemmershoek, Franschhoek and Paarl in the help2read methodology and deployed them as Literacy Tutors in 3 under-resourced schools
  • Over the course of the year, our 41 Literacy Tutors have provided
    • dedicated one-on-one reading help to 451 learners in 902 reading sessions across Grades 2 to 7, meeting each learner twice a week for at least half an hour at a time
    • after school extra mural reading club activities every Monday to Thursday in the school week serving 150 children in each school each week
    • hosted more than 670 learners in the first holiday reading clubs in these three township communities in July and October. We are looking forward to our third holiday programme in December.
  • Our Literacy Tutors participated in ongoing training and development programmes throughout the year with various NGOs and specialist training providers, enhancing their personal and professional skills, building their confidence and exposing them to new opportunities for their futures.
  • A generous donation of books and LEGO play boxes has given great joy to all learners at the school and each and every child participating in the holiday programmes was able to choose a book to take home and keep. For some the first book they have owned, Ever.