NATIONAL NEWS - LEGENDARY storyteller Gcina Mhlope will keep children educationally entertained for 10 days during the Covid-19 lockdown with a daily five-minute online story.
Private higher education institution, Mancosa’s School of Education, has partnered with the Gcinamasiko Arts and Heritage Trust to get Mhlope, the world-renowned actress, playwright, storyteller and author, to keep children captivated with her iconic voice and knack of storytelling.
Mancosa head of the School of Education, Professor Zaheer Hamid, said audio recordings of the storytelling series will be available free of charge on Mancosa’s website (www.mancosa.co.za) from today to 1 May.
The stories will also be available on all of Mancosa’s social media pages – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Lockdown challenges
Hamid said keeping children occupied during the lockdown is quite a challenge.
While some schools were sending out work, many children feeling the impact of the current global catastrophe needed a digital diet that was both light-hearted and uplifting.
‘Lockdown must not only be about schoolwork for children.
‘They also need time to set their minds free to imagine, dream and indulge in creativity.’
Mhlope said the stories have an African theme and would deliberately expose children to a wide vocabulary and provide them with verbal and mental stimuli which they are missing since the closing of schools.
‘I have specifically chosen stories that will take children’s minds somewhere else during these dark and gloomy days,’ said Mhlophe.
International career
Mhlophe’s talent has enabled her to travel to South and North America, Europe, Greenland and Japan.
She has performed her stories in theatres such as the Royal Albert Hall and the Kennedy Centre in the United States, and collaborated with Ladysmith Black Mambazo on a children’s CD.
She again worked with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Francis Bebey quartet in a unique production, Africa at the Opera, which toured opera houses in Germany.
Mhlophe has worked tirelessly running the Nozincwadi Mother of Books literacy campaign since 2001, to help make South Africa a reading nation.
The storytelling endeavour by Mancosa also finds connection with its founder, Professor Yusuf Karodia’s belief that reading is an essential ingredient for children to improve their literacy, further their education and to brighten their future.
Through the Yusuf Karodia Foundation, he has launched the ‘Million Books Project’ which aims to provide more than a million books to schoolchildren across South Africa through mobile libraries.
