A community newspaper in South Africa earns an international prize for a weekly science supplement aimed at young readers, which has also led to a general increase in readership.
The "Limpopo Mirror" newspaper (circulation 8,000) has been awarded the "2005 World Young Reader Prize" for its supplement "Science of Life". The prize, which Limpopo Mirror won jointly with "The Irish Independent" newspaper, is awarded annually by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) to newspapers that devise the most innovative projects to develop young readership. "This paper successfully meets the needs of its community by producing low-cost resources in a most effective way. We were especially impressed by the technology link in the project," says WAN about the South African winner. RAP 21 spoke to Pieter Jooste, coordinator of the project and marketing manager at the Limpopo Mirror.
“We are overjoyed at receiving the World Young Reader Prize! We never expected such an honour since we are a small community publication, with limited resources. We never expected to be able to compete with all the major countries and publications that are out there. We were hoping at most for a report or some feedback from the judges that would indicate to us how our product was perceived, and what we could do to improve it,” says Jooste.
In the area where the newspaper distributes, 50 percent of the population are aged 18 and under, 25 percent only have a primary school certificate, 25 percent of the people are illiterate and only 12,6 percent are formally employed. Educational resources are minimal and most of the schools are poor, having no access to basic services like water, let alone classrooms, textbooks or stationery. As such, the need for educational materials is enormous.
"Science of Life" is a weekly science supplement designed to increase literacy and mathematical skills among the young. "We started planning for an educational supplement in January 2004 as we noted there is a shortage of educational materials in most of the schools in our distribution areas. Our initial idea was to obtain quality material from an accredited source. We were, however, unsuccessful in our attempts, and soon realised that we would have to develop the material ourselves. We had already produced and published revision guides for grade 11 and 12 learners in 2003, focusing on English, Maths and Science. When we reviewed the success/failures of these guides, we realised that they had had little impact because they had been beyond the abilities of our intended target group. This result prompted us to change our focus to entry-level children (grades 1-3).”
The Limpopo Mirror extended the reach of the "Science of Life" supplements by publishing them on their web site free of charge. "In essence, a school that owns only one computer and a printer can provide our material to all the teachers. We can also help publications in other parts of Africa who do not have large budgets, to provide educational material for their communities,” says Jooste.
The result of the success of the project is undeniable: 10,357 students in 28 schools were reached directly, and 82,000 students in more than 400 schools reached indirectly through the Internet. Another positive aspect is that circulation increased by 16 percent from the same period a year earlier. “Much thought went into what we would be able to achieve, and I can say that we met all our original objectives in this regard,” says Jooste.
He hopes that winning the prize will enable the newspaper to get new sponsors. “When you are a community-based newspaper, it is very difficult to approach larger corporate sponsors, as they are mainly committed to national or mainstream publications. This is unfortunate as community newspapers are so perfectly positioned to reach their respective communities. In a set-up like ours, where we have our own printing presses, we can easily, and in a cost-efficient way, increase the printing of educational booklets from 15.000 to 100.000 copies or more. We could also distribute them to other community newspapers in a networking scenario that would benefit many more grass-root level readers. Of course, increased print orders result in increased costs, but perhaps we will now be able to approach sponsors who would be willing to become partners in our projects,” says Jooste.
Despite the overall success of the project, the newspaper has had to overcome several obstacles when producing "Science of Life". Surprisingly, the main challenge has not been not the financial aspect but the lack of quality educational material. "There is very little material available on the Internet, and to purchase it from accredited sources just simply cost too much for us. There is a definite need in our community for educational resources, but we need to keep the costs down. We could not, for example, raise the cover price of our publication to cover additional printing costs, as our readers simply cannot afford an increase.”
Limpopo Mirror plans on extending the "Science of Life" project in the future. “There certainly is room for expansion. We plan to expand the project in two ways. First, we want to incorporate a road safety element into future booklets. We have already had promising discussions with the South African National Roads Agency, and now we may be in a better position to implement them. Second, we hope to design and print a larger volume of booklets, which we want to distribute to more schools in our region. The logistics involved, however, are substantial.”
The winners of the World Young Reader Prize 2005 get to attend the World Young Reader Conference to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina from 18 to 21 September. “I am extremely excited at the prospect of going to Argentina. I have never left the shores of South Africa (I travelled to neighbouring Namibia once) and I am positive that this experience will broaden my horizons. I am sure that there will be so much to learn and absorb at the conference, and I relish the prospect of just interacting with people from publications around the world. I do not know much about Argentina, except that they play rugby, and this already rates very highly with us South Africans. All in all, I think that going to Argentina will be a tremendous event in my life,” says Jooste.
The "Science of Life" supplements can be found at: http://www.zoutnet.co.za/sol/index.asp
To read more about the winners and the WAN Young Reader Prize, go to: http://www.wan-press.org/nie/wyrp.php