“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go” – this is a famous quote from children’s author Dr Seuss and no words could be truer.
Last week, a team of reporters from our newsroom spent three days visiting libraries across Nelson Mandela Bay, and what they found were libraries bustling with school pupils, young adults and even the elderly, all engrossed in books.
Some were there for research for their projects, others to read newspapers and to look for jobs while the rest were simply searching for leisure reads.
It was encouraging to see those treasure troves have not become obsolete, especially in an age when social media dominates the subculture of young people the world over.
But with that said, it is important to keep up with technology and ensure that our youth is exposed to the ICT sector, and the career opportunities it presents and will continue to provide in future.
It is thus of the utmost importance that Wi-Fi is rolled out at all our libraries around the city. This negates the problem of outdated information in the books at libraries.
It will also help young adults to search and apply for jobs online, which is to a large extent the preferred method of recruitment by corporate SA.
It goes without saying that the government carries the constitutional responsibility to provide the best learning tools and facilities in our communities.
We believe, however, that this responsibility is so crucial that it cannot be left exclusively at the door of a state, especially one that has demonstrated limited capacity to fulfil some of its duties.
This is why today we call on business to step in and assist to fill the gaps that exist – be it infrastructure, security or any other tools to improve services in our libraries.
If we agree that ours is a collective generational mandate to build a nation that reads, learns and grows in its intellectual capacity, then we must constantly search for every opportunity to make a practical contribution.
This, we believe, is one of them.