The Reader Organisation in South Africa

From Niall Gibney, Community Development Assistant

As part of my apprenticeship development, it was noticed that the furthest I had ever travelled was Benidorm with the ex (how classy am I?) or Disneyland Paris with my old school. Both top tourist destinations I know. Then one day we gave a presentation to the LFC Foundation (Liverpool Football Club's Charity) and the Director of The Foundation got speaking about a project they were going to visit in South Africa called Whizz Kids. It was suggested that I travel with the LFC coaches but represent The Reader Organisation - I still had to wear a Liverpool coat and training gear though.

We visited a number of schools for football coaching and reading and I gave away copies of A Little, Aloud for Children to a really poor school in the province of Kwazulu-Natal. After this, I read a story about chickens with kids whose first tongue was in Zulu!

The whole experience was amazing but I’m going to leave you hanging though until next week when I’ll be doing a day by day account of the trip (and just how amazing it was).

In the meantime, you can read more about the trip on the LFC blog, The Kop.