CHAPTER 6:
Nali'bali re-defines support packages for their “Story Powered Spaces”
During 2018, what started out as a plan to differentiate our packages according to each of our different “spaces,” became an opportunity to create communities of practice between stakeholders who worked in different spaces, within the same region.
This deliberate shift in strategy was motivated by multiple factors, including:
Research findings
The external evaluation of our multilingual newspaper supplement (supplement evaluation) found that it is a cost-effective, sought-after resource across all the different “spaces”.
Reading club needs
An internal survey of our reading clubs showed that prioritising the distribution of resources, combined with training, was more effective than customising resource distribution, as some spaces were not receiving reading materials from Nal’ibali. This shift in approach required consolidation of our data management system and call centre.
Shift to a child-centric approach
For 2019, Nal’ibali will develop a “reading club journey” programme that takes a child-centred approach. This was sparked by the findings of an external review conducted by GMT+, in August 2018.
In the first half of 2018, we made progress towards the goal of repackaging our training and mentoring programme. This was done through launching training modules which included:
Mentoring milestones
Differentiated reading club curricula for children in different age groups.
A standardised reading materials package.
This new approach has been enhanced through a focus on changing behaviour:
- The programme is delivered through multiple face-to-face contact sessions with each participant;
- It includes practical home tasks between modules to establish habits;
- Suggested activities are included with materials to remove barriers to practice.
- The curriculum has been positively received by recipients.
In the second half of 2018, we continued to strengthen our “packaging” through the following activities:
Imbizos (“gatherings”)
The core campaign objectives of these events were to:
- Celebrate the work of partners and the FUNda Leaders;
- To share success stories and motivate participants;
- To present a communication plan, so that FUNda Leaders understand how Nal’ibali will stay in touch with them after they graduate from the modular training programme;
- To gather input from Nali’bali stakeholders on dealing with the literacy crisis in South Africa.
An imbizo toolkit was designed to guide and standardise these events across provinces.
Reading club starter pack
Nali’bali embarked on designing a “reading club journey” for children using existing materials and incorporates the principles of behavioural science.
FUNda Leader loyalty programme (FUNda Sonke)
The end of 2018 was spent creating videos for the three FUNda leader training modules, which will be available on our online learning platform. These online study modules will complement the loyalty programme which looks to motivate, reward and recognise active FUNda Leaders.
