Working with parents to promote children’s literacy: a family literacy project in Uganda

Abstract

This article discusses the importance of family practices to children’s acquisition of literacy and describes attempts to influence such practices through the institution of family literacy programmes. One of these is the Family Literacy Project in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, which both served as a model and provided material for a similar project at the Kitengesa Community Library in Uganda. The Kitengesa project is described in detail with particular emphasis on an exercise involving the translation of children’s books into Luganda. The project as a whole and the translation exercise in particular elicited a warm response and seem to have been beneficial for both the adult participants and their children. The authors conclude that the project should be continued and extended but that more books are needed that are easy enough for such audiences and that reflect their African experiences.