At Nal’ibali we believe in Story Power. The power of stories to ignite a child’s imagination and urge small fingers to turn the page so that they can find out what happens next. The power of stories to switch off a television set so that a caregiver and child can snuggle in and bond over a book. The power of stories to light up a teacher’s face and voice as she uses the greatest educational tool available to her – the natural curiosity of the children in her class. The power of stories to place the reader in the shoes of the protagonist as they zoom through a life entirely different from their own, building empathy line by line.

Stories are so powerful in fact acclaimed author Yuval Noah Hariri has argued that our ability to tell them may well have tipped the evolutionary scales in our favour. He wrote that “without an ability to compose fiction, the Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behaviour to rapidly changing challenges… The truly unique trait of 'Sapiens',” he continues, “is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities.”

2018 was another year of seeing the Nal’ibali campaign blossom. Nal’ibali uses the power of stories to grow a love for reading. We are only able to do this because so many of us believe in Story Power; that stories can shape a future in South Africa that is better than our past. My personal thanks to the support of our spirited team, our inspiring FUNda Leaders, our passionate partners, our big-picture funders, and of course our ever-encouraging trustees. May we continue to work together to build a Story Powered Nation!

In December 2017 it was reported that, “South Africa was placed last out of 50 countries in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) which included nearly 320‚000 children globally. The survey also found that reading scores have not improved since 2011.”

These alarming statistics confirm the critical importance of the work done by the Nal’ibali read-for-enjoyment campaign. Nal’ibali promotes the importance and joy  of reading with children in South Africa, through enabling fun and meaningful opportunities for children to enjoy stories and books in their home languages.

In the six years that Nal’ibali has been in existence, significant progress has been made in their reach. The scale of these touch points and interactions with South Africans is highlighted through a variety of literacy interventions, one of which reached over 1 million children who were read aloud to on World Read Aloud Day on 1 February 2018.

I am proud of the work that the Nal’ibali team has done and continues to do, and I hope both the public and private sectors will recognise the importance of what the Nal’ibali campaign seeks to achieve, and find ways in which to partner with Nal’ibali to reach all South Africans.

2018 was a year of significant growth for Nal’ibali.

• Revenue (including interest) increased by 36% to R74.7m which was roughly matched by operating expenses which rose 34% to R73.3m.
• Revenue included a grant of R15m from a new funder, First Rand Empowerment Foundation.
• Total comprehensive income for the year increased by 330% to R1.4m.
• Total assets increased by 21% to R33.6m.
• Total liabilities increased by 16% to R 31.1m.
• Nal’ibali received an unqualified audit report for the year ended 31 December 2017.
• Received favourable reports following system audits by two of its funders.

During 2018, Nal’ibali entered into a partnership with the University of Johannesburg Accounting Faculty (UJAF) whereby the university would perform internal audit services. The first audit took place in June 2018.The leadership of Nal’ibali is constantly looking to strengthening its internal control systems.

Our vision is to be a ground-breaking NGO in the use and analysis of rich data to inform strategy and decisions. We made huge progress towards this goal in 2018. We commissioned an external evaluation of the Nal’ibali supplement and conducted two major call centre surveys from our internal call centre. The results from the external evaluation and survey showed that two-thirds of reading clubs we originally reached are still operational and that our multilingual newspaper supplement has encouraged a high incidence of reading habits - which is one of our core objectives. The data collected also highlighted areas that can be improved on, and the type of support needed by reading clubs. These insights have helped us to better plan and budget for 2019 and beyond.

The highlight for 2018 was the opening of the Johannesburg office in September. We also implemented major upgrades to our IT and telecommunications systems at all our existing offices. We installed internet-based (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phones in all our offices, which has resulted in cost cutting as internal calls can be made at no cost, and external calls are significantly cheaper than fixed line calling through Telkom. During the year all field staff were equipped with cellular phones for work. This was made possible by the savings achieved from changing existing cellular data services from pay-as-you-go to monthly data contracts. The end result has been employees getting more data than in previous years, at overall lower cost to Nal’ibali. Towards the end of 2018, PANDA security software was installed on all Nal’ibali networks to improve security and IT support response, in preparation for the implementation of national legislation on the Protection of Personal Information (POPIA).

At the start of 2018 Nal’ibali joined the Old Mutual Superfund which afforded all employees the opportunity to join a provident fund and have access to group life insurance, disability and a funeral policy. A staff wellness programme, run by ICAS, was rolled out in September. All employees and their immediate families can use the service which provides telephonic counselling, financial advice, legal guidance and a range of other support services. The HR department managed the recruitment of 60+ vacancies, most of which were new roles created as part of Nal’ibali’s growth plan. A twice-yearly performance appraisal process was also implemented.

A major goal for Communications in 2018 was to increase brand awareness and to encourage increased access to our free resources. We modernised our logo and branding and launched a large-scale, mass-media campaign to increase awareness of both the Nal’ibali brand and its core message. The bulk of these efforts, including a brand building radio awareness campaign, flighting in our four focus provinces. A significant highlight was our World Read Aloud Day event in February, when Nal’ibali mobilised South Africans to read aloud to almost 1.3 million people on the same day. This achievement exceeded our targeted audience of 1 million, and it showed an 80% participation increase from the previous year. We also doubled our target of new website users in 2018 and website traffic to the “stories” section of the website grew eightfold.

2018 was an extremely busy year for the Nali’bali programmes team and we are pleased to have achieved the following:

• streamlined our partnership model which enabled us to work more strategically with our partners,
• trained a total of 7027 individuals in 168 organisations,
• registered 140 995 children in active reading clubs across South Africa.

On a macro community level, a total of 871 schools now have a “Nal’ibali footprint,” which equates to more than 4% of all primary schools in the country. Nal’ibali cannot spread the love and passion for reading across South Africa alone, which is why one of our key strategies for 2018 and 2019 is to work with likeminded individuals and organisations to help promote reading to South African children.

Nali’bali’s Content and Learning department became operational at the start of 2019. The department is an amalgamation of the training and curriculum development functions in the organisation. The department supports Programmes, Research and Innovation and Communications teams through training, mentoring, support and materials development.

The team consists of three master trainers, a multilingual curriculum specialist and a Head of Department. All training, mentoring and support of Nal’ibali’s programme implementers is managed and coordinated by the Training team at a national level. Nal’ibali’s multilingual newspaper supplement and content for marketing and communications is developed by the Curriculum development team. Skills development and organisational learning forms part of the department’s mandate, and growth and learning for all staff stands at the foundation of the department.