Educating children one book & one washing load at a time

Children growing up in lower socio-economic circumstances generally have fewer resources, materials toys and books in their early years

South African caregivers spend up to nine hours a week scrubbing loads of dirty laundry by hand. Five students from Oxford University figured that this enormous amount of time that women in township communities spent washing clothes should be dedicated to their children’s development instead.
After coming across a 2013 study conducted in the Khayelitsha township which concluded that ‘dialogic picture book sharing,’ meaning interactive parent-child reading sessions, contributed greatly to children’s language and concentration skills, the team of young social entrepreneurs created a social impact initiative called Libromat.

“Children growing up in lower socio-economic circumstances generally have fewer resources, materials toys and books in their early years,” said Eric Atmore, a professor in the University of Cape Town’s Department of Social Development.

“This means that they miss out on essential early learning opportunities which children from more affluent families enjoy. They are also more likely to lag developmentally, socially, emotionally, physically and cognitively.”

With two centres open in the Khayelitsha and Nyanga townships outside of Cape Town, the five Oxford students established a hybrid solution to the obstacles faced by parents in these communities: a library-laundromat.

Libromat supplies caregivers with picture books and eight-week long training sessions on book-sharing with their children, all this while the washing machines take care of their clothes.
At first, the primary challenge was finding ways to deal with illiteracy among the parents, says Vuyiseka Rola, the Libromat Communications Officer. However, over time, she observed positive changes between a parent and child, even when the adult struggled with the words.

“You don’t have to be able to to read as a parent, you just need to be present with the kid to bond,” she said. “Most books are pictures, so the kids will lead with turning the pages and pointing at the book. The parents will just ask what is it that you see, and the kid will tell. So they don’t feel like they’re useless.” Even though workshops also prioritise adult literacy, “It’s not only about the reading.”

Although community members were sceptical of Libromat’s efforts when the project was in its infancy, they soon warmed up to the social enterprise’s mission after witnessing the positive impact it had on their relationships with their child in addition to the children’s language development.

“People took a while to get used to the program, but we have noticed and have been impressed with how quickly people have taken to the idea,” Rola said. “We went around communities and did interviews to survey the effects.”

According to the Libromat team, their creation demonstrates “a paradigm shift in parental education” because other organisations’ efforts to address the early childhood development gaps present in impoverished communities fail to take caregivers’ everyday challenges into consideration. Young mothers like Lindelwa Masizana (29), who visits the Libromat centre located in the Two Town community of Khayelitsha, value the convenience of the affordable and time-saving laundry services offered.

“I was excited because I will not use my hands to do the washing anymore,” Masizana said. “Now, I can share a book with my child and have a positive bond.” Professor Atmore, who also works as a specialist at the Early Childhood Development Centre in Cape Town, stresses the importance of the type of social services that organisations like Libromat promote.

“It is vital that innovative organisations such as Libromat, the Centre for Early Childhood Development and many others expand their services and early learning programmes,” he said. “This will provide more young children and families with a path out of poverty by reducing the deficit which these children would otherwise enter formal schooling with and which is extremely difficult to catch up and compensate for.”

Aside from opening more centres throughout township communities, the Libromat team aims to pair up with more organisations that can provide children’s books for their libraries, so they can alleviate the daily burdens of families’ one book, and one load, at a time.

City Press, South Africa