2 Lorraine Chaskalson - Mon 2nd November 2009

“I also found this site inspiring. In 2010 I will be running a programme for high school children in Johannesburg (South Africa). The children are in an inner city school and for almost all of them English is a second or further language. The school teaches in English as that is the language in which they will write their school-leaving exams. The programme is a creative writing programme for volunteers in grades 9-11 on Saturdays. There is very little to stimulate the children in the area other than their school, which they love. They are going to write stories, which they can illustrate or get others to illustrate, for children at reading ages 5 - 8 and will test what they have written on two nearby primary schools' children. The books will be published separately for the other two schools' libraries and in a magazine for all those who participate. Copies of the magazine will be lodged in their own library as a sign of their achievements. I hope to train volunteer teachers at the school as facilitators in this project so that they can continue to offer this opportunity in subsequent years after I facilitate for the first two years with those who volunteer as facilitators also helping. The idea of writing letters to people in the community has made me think the children could write inviting writers in or fairly near Johannesburg to talk to them and read from their own writing whether verse or prose fiction or plays. We would obviously include children's book writers. Lorraine Chaskalson.”