South Africa is facing its worst childhood literacy crisis in modern history. Over 80% of grade 4 children cannot read for meaning, according to the Pirls Study of Literacy Education 2021. As a result, South Africa now ranks last in the world in literacy education. Not reading for meaning impacts the overall ability to learn - a massive problem that has dire future consequences for children and the country.
Part of the challenge is that children are unable to access books in their local language and African contexts - only 2% of published books are in their mother tongue and culturally relatable, despite the country having 11 official languages. Furthermore, less than 50% of parents read with their children at home due to generational literacy challenges that again have emanated from a lack of books in home languages.
Lack of parental involvement in reading at home makes all efforts in childhood literacy education significantly more challenging. Cadbury recognized this blinding generational inequality in education and inclusivity and set out to make an impact on childhood literacy, by creating a movement to increase family reading time at home.
We faced a key challenge in driving our objective. Parents and children who suffer from low literacy are less inclined to be drawn to books and reading in any language because they find it too challenging.
Simply creating awareness and giving families access to our culturally relevant homegrown storybooks in their own language would not be effective.
A key insight led us to a ground-breaking new approach to making reading more appealing: Our youth and young parents are a generation of digital creators, performers, and storytellers. We decided that rather than simply giving them books, we could instead attract them to acts of reading, by giving them MICROPHONES.
Inspired by this, we built The Cadbury Generosity Storytime Studio: the world’s first digitally-led pop-up audiobook recording studio – a space for families to become voice artists and performers and create their very own personal audiobooks. We launched a national roadshow together with our campaign call to action “#GiveAVoiceToStorytime”.
Our studios featured sound-proof recording booths in which our custom-built tech platform supported families through an exciting digitally led literacy journey.
In order to create a recording participants had to peruse our digital library on our tablets, and select their preferred language and a culturally relevant homegrown story, to read out loud. Professional audio equipment captured the narrations, and the technology guided families in refining and submitting them online.
These family voice recordings were shared on our digital library for all South Africans to access – resulting in the largest online local audiobook collection in all 11 languages and homegrown cultural contexts.
Each family received their personal audio story within minutes of submitting the recording, along with the physical book in their mother-tongue. Audiobooks featuring voices of parents were especially cherished by children, who could be comforted by hearing them whilst performing their read-alongs at home.
The experience was so enriching and enthralling that we got families to start a movement of creating their own series of personal audiobooks thereafter, by continuing to access our virtual library of homegrown stories.
Families who attended were captivated by this experience and we found our campaign message spreading through word of mouth and social media as organic content was shared.
By bringing in a more modern way of engaging in reading, and championing inclusivity across language and cultures, we effectively broke barriers to literacy education and made reading at home a more enjoyable family practice.
The studio became a major national attraction, drawing crowds of families and schools from townships and rural areas excited by the opportunity to create their own audiobooks.
We engaged 2,448,914 individuals from our target audience, clocking an impressive 1,099,422 minutes of family audiobook recordings, producing a remarkable 2,527 completed audiobooks, and the creation of South Africa’s largest collection of online audiobooks of homegrown stories in all 11 official languages.
The buzz extended to TV, radio, and social media presence that amplified its impact giving an ROI in excess of 7x and achieving a whopping 438m social impressions.
Digital engagement was overwhelming with over 1.3 million site visits and 424,000 visits to our virtual homegrown stories library as parents started downloading our stories and audiobooks.
Schools in our target districts reported a transformative 103% increase in the frequency of reading at home among participating children and over the full 3-year journey, a 215% increase in reading comprehension.
The campaign’s impact is tangible – we attracted thousands of families into the ritual of reading when it was clear that books and awareness alone would fail to do so. We opened a new realm for literacy inclusivity and diversity in South Africa through resonant local language and culture. Our digital homegrown stories library and audiobooks are there for all current and future generations to continue to ignite the love of reading needed. The full impact of our results, rituals and resources now records a new chapter for literacy education in South Africa.
