Pizza Hut’s literacy mission kicked off in the Mother City today with the launch of the Pizza Hut African Literacy Project, its new campaign to get more of Africa’s children reading. The project, which will take Pizza Hut Africa General Manager Ewan Davenport and his team across Africa on a route map that follows the shape of a huge pizza slice, is Pizza Hut Africa’s contribution to the company’s global initiative called Pizza Hut: The Literacy Project. Established in 2016, Pizza Hut: The Literacy Project was created to encourage literacy through providing reading resources and engaging customers to make a difference for the cause. In its first year, the global campaign impacted 15.9 million people and distributed more than 275,000 books and educational resources to communities in the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica and South Africa.
Dubbed the “Slice of Africa” journey due to the unique pizza slice shape of its route map, the Pizza Hut African Literacy Project’s kickoff in Cape Town signifies Pizza Hut doing something a little different in the name of its literacy mission. “Instead of delivering pizza, we are delivering Red Reading Boxes from our NGO partner, the READ Educational Trust, and exploring the innovative literacy tools they contain with local children in each country,” says Davenport. “As 280 million people in Africa cannot read, the campaign is more relevant than ever. Literacy and reading can be real bridges to opportunity, and we’re focused on using our growing restaurant footprint in Africa to make a difference in the communities we serve.”
READ PR manager Lizelle Langford says, “Read is excited to be part of this project that is making it possible for us to contribute to the language and literacy development of children across the continent through the development of the content of the Red Reading Box. Using interesting topics, a range of activities such as games, puzzles, quizzes and stories, the Box encourages participation from both the children who receive them as well as their families, making this a fun and creative way to grow their English language and literacy skills. Having access to quality reading material of their own is an important step in becoming more literate.”
In each country, Pizza Hut has identified beneficiary learners from NGOs or schools who will be the first to interact with Red Reading Boxes. The Cape Town beneficiary was local NGO, the TLC Outreach Project, which works predominantly with at-risk children, several of whom joined Davenport and his team for the first stop on the continental campaign.
According to research released in 2017 by the University of Pretoria‚ 8 out of 10 Grade 4 pupils in South Africa still cannot read at an appropriate level. South Africa was placed last out of 50 countries in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) which included nearly 320‚000 children globally. “The ability to read at Grade 4 level, when you’re around 10 years old, is particularly crucial, because from Grades 1 to 3 you learn to read‚ and from grades 4 to 12 – you read to learn,” says Davenport. “Literacy goes way beyond the classroom‚ equipping children with the skills and confidence to participate actively in society. Seeing the children light up as they interact with Red Reading Boxes is great to see. They are inspired to read and that gives me hope.”
From Cape Town, Davenport and his team will go on to take Red Reading Boxes to 13 other cities in 12 countries in 22 days. As they travel, the Slice of Africa team along with Pizza Hut franchise partners will launch a customer donation drive in each country to raise funds that will be combined with Pizza Hut contributions to roll out as many boxes as possible.
This campaign also bridges the cultural and linguistic divide by collecting stories at every stop that will ultimately go into a special Africa Edition of the Red Reading Box to be distributed widely across Africa on World Literacy Day in September this year.
“We are off to Angola and Ghana this week and we are excited to meet young learners there. We believe that providing access to reading resources will help people thrive and create more prosperous communities, and we hope that people in every country will get behind this,” says Davenport. “Every cent that gets donated in a country will go to creating Red Reading Boxes for children in that country. The more we can raise, the more boxes we can distribute. It’s time to get on board and give opportunity to children who really need it.”
Follow the “Slice of Africa” journey along its route and donate both in store or online at www.pizzahutafricanliteracyproject.com
Post provided by Pizza Hut
