A literacy project that has successfully been rolled out in Port Elizabeth aims to target thousands of pupils in at least four primary schools in some of the city’s most under-resourced areas by the end of 2019.Settlers Park Primary is the latest beneficiary of a fully installed library courtesy of The Bookery, a Cape Town-based non-profit organisation with one very ambitious goal – realising a library in every school in the country.With a staggering eight out of 10 grade 4 pupils declared “effectively illiterate”, the organisation firmly believes reading is what could boost literacy levels in children – opening a world of imagination to the country’s young minds.In August 2018, Ebongweni Primary School in Kwazakhele became The Bookery’s first library recipient in the Eastern Cape.The school had since started a “very vibrant” reading club, with pupils having adopted an inspiring reading culture, project manager Relda Donaldson said.Donaldson said two more Port Elizabeth schools were set to benefit from the initiative before the end of 2019, bringing the number to four schools in the province so far.“The next few schools, all in the township, have already been earmarked,” she said.“I haven’t done site visits yet, but we’ve had meetings with the principals.“We’re doing them concurrently because processing the books for the new libraries is a massively time-consuming and labour-intensive process.”Donaldson said The Bookery initiative had been launched in the Eastern Cape in partnership with the Literacy Association of SA, and the funding came from external sources.Cape Town-based project manager Cosmos Mabeya’s full-time job is to fundraise and “he does that at a high level”, she said.Donors who contributed to the new library at Settlers Park Primary include Airports Company SA and the Faku Family Foundation, whose founding member, businessman Mkhuseli Faku, formerly from Kwazakhele, is an enthusiastic supporter of the new libraries programme.School principal Jerry van Huyssteen said the pupils were overjoyed.“There’s been a wonderful response from the children.“They were very excited because the previous books were so outdated that they couldn’t use them for anything really.“Now they have modern books and we’re looking forward to upgrading the library further to include computers and an overhead projector.“We’re delighted that The Bookery contacted us because this new library room was also used as a storage room before it was completely renovated.“We got rid of all of our old books and most of the Afrikaans books,” he said.“Most of our learners don’t have access to the internet or other resources at home so it helps a great deal if we have a library at the school for them to do research.”Donaldson said the Settlers Park library contained more than 4,000 books.She said the organisation’s mission was to provide books to children to boost literacy.“Grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning, so that means eight out 10 children in grade 4 are effectively illiterate – and one of the problems is a lack of books.“We put about 4,000 books in each library so that it can work out to about three books per learner,” she said.“So the books are the obvious thing, but then we also provide external funding if schools need to do things like painting [of the rooms] or upgrade security . . . whatever they need to kit the room out so that it’s a fully functioning library.“Then, a very big part of our model is our belief that for a library to function optimally, it needs a full-time librarian.“This should be somebody [from the local community] who is devoted to nothing but the library.“Also, one of our conditions before entering into a partnership with a school is that it creates a library period for every class at least once a week.“In that way we try to facilitate maximum engagement with the books.”