Sibaya Community Trust Promotes The Culture of Reading

Education is the building block of any society, Sibaya Community Trust places much emphasis on this, our aim is to provide the tools needed to help our children have tangible outcomes in the learning scenario.

"When we heard of the struggles faced by Learners and parents when IsiZulu was introduced into the classroom, we realised that the pass rates were below average and there was a large failure rate. The difficulty in grasping the language was faced by both non-Zulu speaking learners as well as learners who came from Zulu speaking backgrounds; we knew we had to do what we could to assist,” said Mr Vivian Reddy the Chairman of Sibaya Community Trust.

Sibaya Community Trust has taken the initiative of sponsoring the double award-winning book “My First IsiZulu Picture Dictionary” to underprivileged schools, this has turned out to be a huge success whereby Learners have found that the book made reading and learning fun and interactive, bringing families together to read the stories unfolding in the pages.

“Schools that Sibaya Community Trust has sponsored the books to have adopted it into their reading programmes and have praised the versatility and efficacy of “My First IsiZulu Picture Dictionary,” said Reddy. “The culture of reading must be expanded from a very young age and this full colour, easy to understand book is a great step towards that.”

This book has not only helped assist in facilitating learners with the language; it has also helped build bridges between members of the community, and it presents a great way to bring people together by learning about each other’s cultures and language.

“This has been evident when people used the book together and helped each other with the words while at the same time having fun and promoting COMRADERY,” said Ms Makhosazane Gwala, the Zulu Language Teacher at Stanger Primary School. Former Judge President Vuka Tshabalala, a Trustee of Sibaya Community Trust said that he was amazed with the brilliance of the book and commended the author Raksha Chabalalsing on the creation of the learning material that will benefit thousands of young minds.

To date, over 20 schools have benefitted from this book via the sponsorship of Sibaya Community Trust and Sibaya Casino & Entertainment Kingdom.