Our last speaker for the day Mignon Hardie, Executive Director of FUNDZA gave a presentation of Language as the Foundation of Community. Mignon started off with the concept that stories have the power to bring about change and the ability to transform lives. She explained that FUNDZA is aimed at adolescents and young adults, to combat the high rate of illiteracy in South Africa. One of the difficulties is that 58% of households do not have books for reading pleasure. The average English marks for the grade 9 student’s is only 33.2% Matriculant students are unable to write in paragraphs, do not understand questions and do not have an understanding of vocabulary. FUNDZA aims to bring about change through supporting reading groups, supplying books with 500 groups supported. She brought up the possibilities of reaching people through cellphone literature, promoting language learning and encouraging writing for expression. Participants then did an exercise where they were asked to do free writing for 5 minutes on ‘My Reading Journey’ which they then shared among each other. Mignon supplied the participants with examples of FUNDZA publications to look through and then asked for feedback on what the participants thought. Examples of what stories worked were those with relatable characters, exciting plots, clear, easy language and authentic plots that were not in a form of preaching. After that, another free writing exercise on ‘Language and Me’ took place. At the end of the exercise, some of the participants of non English speaking language sang a song in their own language, well known by all participants who took part. Mignon concluded her presentation by asking the participant for their views on reaching readers through cell phones versus books or writing on paper.
