Our 2020 Story-Writing Project!

Literacy is freedom; it helps to make a world of free thinkers and a democratic future. Where literacy is limited, and ignorance is involved, we are making a future of limited-thinking people who can easily be controlled by their free- thinking counterparts. In order to level the playing field, we need to instill the love of reading books in our students. This will also help Zambian children to mature into adults who can become free-thinkers and contribute to the world economy. This all starts with something as simple as a book. What kind of book you might ask? Which ones are the right ones?

The right books for our primary school students are those that are easy to read and understand. Our counterparts in the western world find it easier to learn how to read and understand what they are reading because most of the books in front of them are written in the same language they use daily. On the other hand, here in Zambia, most of the books we can access online, in the market and in libraries are written in English. So we have to first teach our students English, a foreign language to them, before they can start reading most books. To instill the love of reading, our students need books written in their local language. I believe that by accessing books written in Cinyanja, our students can read about stories, cultures and other topics that are familiar to them, and develop a love of reading.

This is why I was excited to lead the Impact Network story-writing project during the COVID school closure in 2020. During this project, all Impact Network teachers wrote their own local language books for students to read. All teachers wrote three children’s books: a alphabet book, a simple pattern book, and a story book – altogether they wrote more than 325 books!

Now, we’ve picked the best from each category which are being published on the African Story Book Project website by our Teacher Supervisors and Operations Managers and the books are available to people all over the world! These stories are accessible for anyone who needs to read them. These stories are also available to all teachers and students at Impact Network schools on our tablets and are included in our literacy lessons for the 2021 school year.

When we empower our teachers to write books in local languages, it furthers our mission to build a literate future, and it will be a stepping-stone for our students to develop a good attitude towards reading.

Above: A few pages from a simple pattern book by Petauke North teacher, Justina Mwanza.

Left: : Belina coaches Teselia as she tries uploading a storybook for the first time.

Below: We still have many storybooks left to upload!

If you want to see more Impact Network books on the African Storybook site, go to https://www.africanstorybook.org/reader.php?id=35308&d=0&a=0, choose “CiNyanja” as the language, and check “All Storybooks.” You’ll see many stories from Impact Network – some of which are still being added to and edited!

-Belina