Industry prepares for ninth annual Indigenous Literacy Day next Wednesday

The ninth Indigenous Literacy Day will take place around Australia next Wednesday 2 September.

Indigenous Literacy Day at the Sydney Opera House will be hosted by NITV newsreader Natalie Ahmat, and will feature Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) ambassadors Quentin Bryce, Jessica Mauboy, Deborah Cheetham, Ursula Yovich, Justine Clarke and Alison Lester. They will be joined by four young students from Milikapiti school on Melville Island, who will read from a forthcoming book, as well as hundreds of school children who will bring a favourite book to swap and make a gold coin donation to raise funds for the foundation.

Schools, libraries and universities, as well as book clubs, businesses and other organisations, are encouraged to sign up to host a Great Book Swap event or another fundraising initiative. Participating bookstores will also donate a percentage of their day’s takings to the ILF.

ILF executive director Karen Williams said Indigenous Literacy Day is the foundation’s main fundraising event. ‘People love to share their favourite books and by organising a book swap, it is a way to help us to continue to increase literacy levels in remote Indigenous communities across Australia.’

More than $600,000 has been donated to the foundation in 2015, and it has supplied more than 140,000 books to 250 remote communities in its four years as a foundation. ILF also runs the early literacy project Book Buzz, which has funded more than 40 community literacy projects—including publishing titles in first languages—and organised visits by authors, musicians and illustrators to schools in remote Indigenous communities.

See the ILF website to donate or to register an event for this year’s Indigenous Literacy Day.

Category: Local news