The Nal'ibali Trust: National Reading Barometer Steering Committee

Nal’ibali is a reading-for-enjoyment campaign that builds reading habits in homes, schools and communities. It is planning to launch a National Reading Barometer (NRB) to take a survey measure of South Africans’ reading attitudes, behaviours and access to reading material. The Barometer will be a nationally representative survey with a targeted 4000 respondents. 

The survey will include a strong focus on access to reading materials (including children’s reading materials and materials in African languages), and on behaviours that model, support and encourage children to read. The NRB will provide national data on key indicators that we need to understand to work towards the goal of all children reading for meaning by age 10.  

Steering committee mandate: Steering committee members will oversee strategic direction and technical development. Specific tasks will include: overseeing and contributing to questionnaire development, reviewing pilot feedback, finalising design, directing analysis and reporting, and distributing results. The committee will also have oversight of governance and resourcing. 

Steering committee composition: Nalibali is seeking volunteer representatives from the education sector, libraries, publishing, literacy researchers and grassroots literacy organisations to participate in a steering committee. The committee collectively should represent the diversity of the South African population and the interests of the sector. 

Commitment: Participants will be expected to attend two full-day workshops between April and July (final timeframes dependent on funding approval). A few shorter, virtual workshops may be convened as well. Additionally, participants will be expected to provide prompt input into documents for review by email.  

They request that your organisation covers your time and travel expenses as a contribution towards sector development. However, if this is not feasible, you may request travel expenses be covered by Nal’ibali.  

Why participate? Participation in the steering committee offers you and your organisation an opportunity to influence the survey design and questionnaire and shape the national conversation around reading. All questions and results will be open sourced, and steering committee participants may use the resulting data to support their own organisations, enhance literacy conversations and agendas or contribute to further literacy research. 

Applications should include a brief motivation for your participation on the committee and a CV with two references and can be completed via google form:  https://forms.gle/gbwX5Q2xsHnTfbg29

Further information: katherine@nalibali.org 

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