Indigo has just awarded a grant of £13,844.91 to the FunDza Literacy Trust in South Africa. Using internet and mobile the trust aims to get more South Africans reading and writing in a country where 9 million people are functionally illiterate. FunDza is already a well-developed organisation with 390,000 readers and an online library of seven novels, 14 non-fiction titles, 40 short stories and over 200 articles all aimed at getting young people reading. The grant will allow FunDza to make technical upgrades to the platform they currently use to make it more interactive, easier to navigate and to help promote FunDza to more young people.
Some of the planned improvements include the creation of different templates for the mobile site and the Mxit portal. Presently, each represents a compromised user experience as the site is designed to work in both formats interchangeably. The Mxit portal will be expanded to include a chatroom for literary discussion and a competition facility. The mobile site will benefit from increased navigation speeds and the resolution of several internal errors. With many of these upgrades underway, the team at FunDza will be able to look towards the future which will hopefully include a stand-alone app for smartphones depending on how the mobile market develops over the next few years. Either way the upgrade will allow FunDza to grow membership and foster a love of reading in more and more young South Africans. All the team at Indigo wish them well!
Fantastic and well deserved ! Keep up the good work and get everyone reading.