Reading remains an essential ingredient for children to improve their literacy, further their education and to brighten their future. Resultantly, reading is foundational to advance ones quality of life. This is something that Professor Yusuf Karodia the founder of MANCOSA understands fully.  

Greyville Primary School situated in Durban, was the proud recipient of three state of the art mobile libraries which were kindly sponsored by The Management College of Southern Africa (MANCOSA). Despite research showing that access to libraries improves learner performance and increases their chances of success, learners at Greyville Primary were deprived of this critical resource. Despite the enormous efforts of the educators and staff at Greyville Primary, the learners’ lack of library facilities has proved a huge impediment in improving the children’s literacy rates. With the introduction of MANCOSA’s innovative mobile libraries, which can be wheeled from one classroom to another, learners at Greyville Primary can now easily access a diverse collection of books, in their classrooms and to date they have donated in excess of twenty mobile libraries, across five provinces.

 Professor Yusuf Karodia, the founder of MANCOSA led the mobile library handover to the management team at Greyville Primary. Karodia was happy to state that in 2017, MANCOSA had embarked on implementing one of its most exciting social investment projects, the Read to Lead campaign, in partnership with the Department of Basic Education. The campaign will result in the provisioning of mobile libraries across South Africa, at under-resourced, deserving schools. Karodia further stated that MANCOSA has heeded the call made by the Honourable Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, for all South Africans to support the Read to Lead campaign“

A literate, educated society is a safer, healthier, and more prosperous society. It is envisaged that the introduction of these mobile libraries will contribute in a small, yet meaningful way to improve the literacy rate in our country,” said Karodia.

According to Mr Louis Taylor, Director of Partnerships in education, “the Department of Basic Education (DBE) is highly appreciative of the contributions made by business in order to improve quality education in less privileged communities. The DBE welcomes this initiative by MANCOSA and we will ensure that this contribution of learning resources will be optimized by the schools’’

The roll-out of the mobile libraries to the beneficiary schools was coordinated and managed by Ahmed Motala of the New Africa Education Foundation, an NPO that has partnered with MANCOSA and the Department of Basic Education. (DBE)