Dare To Change NPC
What does your company do?
Dare To Change NPC is on a mission to eradicate the “poverty of literacy” that exists amongst South African children. The organisation aims to empower the importance of literacy to enable children to excel academically, as we firmly believe that when children are unable to read they are unable to speak up. This mission is achieved through an annual program that the organisation runs called “Reading To Change the World” , where the organisation annually selects rural primary schools to empower with a library. The initiative has a step by step community empowerment approach. Once a school has been identified a partnership is then formed and an evaluation is conducted by the Dare To Change team to determine the specific unique literacy needs the school has , the challenges the learners face and language medium. Books are selected to address those needs , all the libraries only offer locally authored South African books. Each library is a sanctuary with over 500 books by African authors. After this step the implementation of the project involves working with community based artisans to establish the library to financially empower community based artisans. Once the library has been launched and opened to the learners a year long process of monitoring and impact measuring is conducted with the school and a library teacher assistance is contracted by the organisation, this is an initiative to empower unemployed youth in the selected community who hold a Bachelor of Education degree or are in their final year studying towards one. This part of the initiative is to work with the community to ensure that the library is fully functional with all the support needed to ensure that the school is successful in using it.
What is your biggest success?
Our biggest success has been since the founding of the company in 2022 , has been the immense growth of our impact. Since the founding in 2022 , we have impacted 5 primary schools , 4 in Gauteng and 1 in Northern Cape. We have reached close to 8000 learners. This is was achieved with minimal funding and we have continued to champion a mission which isn’t prioritised , and advocated for literacy and the improvement of basic education to be prioritised.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
Our largest hurdle has been funding as well as staff capacity as a small organisation with a nationwide operation. We have had funding challenges as we struggle largely because there isn’t much funding opportunities for literacy focused programs and we have been working to educate private and public sector funders on the importance of literacy for the future of education. We have struggled with widening our reach to more provinces in the country and we have not been able to due to the funding challenges. 81% of Grade four learners are unable to read for comprehension making them functionally illiterate, thus we are attempting to expand our initiative and the importance of it however our largest hurdle remains funding.
