Cape Flats video game initiative encourages children to read

The manager of the Delft Library on the Cape Flats, Ashley Lewis says they are being inundated with children visiting the library on a daily basis after the library started a new initiative called “GAMING”. It involves teens playing video games in the library. But before they can play the games, they have to first become library members and take out a book and read it. They are also required to do their homework first in the library.

Lewis says in the first few days of the project, the number of children coming to the library grew from four to 25.

Lewis says it was tough at the beginning.

“So, what I try to think of what our children are struggling with, it’s the reading and the homework so let’s attach that to the gaming and give them the motivation by doing homework. You get a chance of playing the game by reading a book you get a chance of playing the game and the game is a motivation for them and now I know I am working towards getting our children literate.”

Today marks the celebration of the World Read Aloud Day.