One of the organisations I’ve had the pleasure of working with lately is the Otto Foundation, a non-profit founded in 2016 with the goal of promoting reading for enjoyment in schools in Cape Town’s District Six neighbourhood. Since then, they have built and continue to manage four beautiful school libraries, catering to roughly 2 000 school kids from five different primary schools. They are in the process of creating two more libraries, which will be completed within the next year. Run by a full-time staff of five, a team of librarians and a host of volunteers, the Otto Foundation has been quietly making a massive impact in one of the Mother City’s most historic districts, and I sat down with a few members of their team to talk about it.
Frouwien Bosman, CEO of the Otto Foundation, told me that the organisation’s decision to focus on schools in District Six was informed by the neighbourhood’s history.
“District Six is a powerful reminder of our history of unequal and separate development, the impact of the apartheid government’s under-resourcing of black and coloured schools, and the devastating effect that the Group Areas Act and the associated forced removals had on schools that were delivering quality education in these trying circumstances,” says Frouwien. “We believe that strong schools in District Six can become a symbol of hope and positive change in South Africa.”
Frouwien explained that while the main goal of the foundation is to help kids discover – and practise – a love of reading, their work goes far beyond the library. In the schools where they operate libraries, they also support a range of other programmes, including feeding schemes, computer labs, sports programmes, teacher upskilling and even psycho-social support programmes.
“A hungry child won’t want to read. A traumatised child won’t want to read,” explains Nonikiwe Mashologu, the Otto Foundation’s director of partnerships. “Our goal is for the kids to be reading and having fun, but many kids at our schools have challenging situations at home, so we need to take a holistic approach.” The psycho-social support programmes are provided by Community Keepers, one of the many organisations the Otto Foundation works with in support of their schools and learners.
“There are many fabulous organisations that are working on these things, and we thought, rather than reinventing the wheel, let’s find people we can partner with who can help us tackle those things,” says Nonikiwe. Another one of those partnerships is with Book Dash. Book Dash works with creative volunteers to create contextually relevant books for South African children. The Otto Foundation has sponsored a number of the Book Dash book creation events, and hosts book donation days at their schools to build up their learners’ at-home libraries.
Learners are allowed to take up to four library books home a week, but during the lockdown, just before schools shut down, the Otto Foundation sent kids home with armfuls of books so they would have enough to read until the lockdown ended.
For Nonikiwe, one of the biggest gifts of the foundation’s libraries is the safe spaces they’ve created for kids to spend time, have tough conversations and experience their emotions. “Teachers have so much curriculum material to go through that the kids don’t have time in class to just feel and just be. The library becomes that space,” she explains.
The Otto Foundation team has got creative in how they encourage their learners to interact with the books and with each other – and even with learners from other schools, through their adorable pen pal boxes in each of the libraries. They provide learners with reading journals to track their reads, and build activity sheets that children can work through with their parents. They also host quarterly Book Buddy sessions, where older learners read with younger ones.
But the Otto Foundation also looks out for its teachers, with dedicated adult shelves and funding opportunities for teacher training programmes. At two of their schools, they have provided funding to hire extra teachers in order to bring down class sizes, benefitting teachers and learners alike.
Anthony Silverston posing with teachers and librarians
The team’s excitement for their work is contagious. Catalyst Press recently took author Anthony Silverston to run a comics workshop with several of their libraries, in honour of the launch of Pearl of the sea, Triggerfish Animation Studio’s first ever graphic novel. Anthony showed learners how to create their own comics, passed out colouring sheets and Pearl of the sea-themed stickers, and talked about Pearl, the young South African girl at the centre of the story.
Silverston doing a reading
Seeing the joy on these young learners’ faces, as they flipped through the book and saw themselves reflected back – it’s those kinds of moments that motivate all in the book world to keep doing what we do.
The Otto Foundation also hosted Karen Vermeulen and Izak de Vries recently.
Izak de Vries (translator), Jessica Powers (publisher) and Karen Vermeulen (illustrator)
Vermeulen is the illustrator of It’s just skin, silly! She ran an illustration workshop.
De Vries translated the book into Afrikaans; the title is Dis net vel, my pel! He did two super-silly readings, with grade R learners literally rolling on the floor with laughter.
The Otto Foundation is currently fundraising for their first ever high school library, which will open at Good Hope Seminary High School in October and serve over 450 girls. You can donate here to help them purchase books.
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Authors interested in visiting the Otto Foundation libraries for readings can get in touch with Nonikiwe at nonikiwe@ottofoundation.org.
SarahBelle Selig is from Catalyst Press, an independent publisher of African authors, including international award winners Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, Idza Luhumyo, Niki Daly, Mbozi Haimbe, Sifiso Mzobe, Jacob M’hango and more. She heads up the South African office in Cape Town. (Catalyst also has offices in El Paso, Texas, and in New York City, New York.) Part of her job is to work with local organisations to encourage reading.
- Photohraphy by SarahBelle Selig, Lara Aucamp and Izak de Vries
See also:
The "real" pearl of the sea: ’n Leser se indruk van die grafiese roman Pearl of the Sea
Three women providing a catalyst for African literature: An interview