Raglan Food Co. co-founder Latesha Randall talks about the company's environmental efforts. Video / Raglan Food Co
A Raglan-based trust is fighting falling literacy rates by distributing 100 handcrafted and curated Little Libraries to early childhood education centres across New Zealand.
The goal is to reach a further 1000 centres over the next seven years.
“We want to help 100,000 Kiwi kids fall in love with reading,” Values Trust founding trustee Tesh Hearth said.
“Our hypothesis was that if we could present the books in a beautiful, engaging way, this would draw the tamariki in and help books compete with the toys.”
The Education Hub shared findings in 2022 that literacy rates in children had dropped to “deeply worrying” levels with approx 40 per cent of adults unable to read and write at a day-to-day functional level.
Early childhood centres in particular, do not receive specific funding for books.
The Values Trust, a charitable trust focused on making a difference for climate, creatures and children’s literacy, wanted to help.
They partnered with literacy-focused organisations to curate Little Libraries: a collection of 20 award-winning books by New Zealand authors. Each Little Library also includes bilingual stories.
“Our research showed that children want to see themselves reflected in the books,” Hearth said.
“With many centres having a high Pasifika demographic, we made sure this factored into our final selection of titles.”
100 Little Libraries are already being shipped into high-need early childhood centres around the country, with a goal to reach 1000 centres over the next seven years.
The books are presented in a handcrafted, forest design which took months to develop, with Hearth’s husband Dave and and brother-in-law Johny Stoof working alongside the production team at Play’n’Learn to come up with the design.
The finished product is a physical set of colourful and fun bookshelves in the shape of rocks, bushes and trees.
Beyond providing the shelving and the books themselves, the wider aspirations of Little Libraries are to provide an “eco-system of literacy” to the centres, connecting them to other programmes and funding, Hearth said.
“We were so delighted with the feedback from our pilot centres,” Woodley said.
“The children showed a noticeable lift in interest and engagement with books. We had overwhelmingly positive feedback from all the centres who participated.”
Tesh Hearth (formerly Randall) worked with her husband Dave Hearth (left) and his brother Johny Stoof to develop Little Libraries.
Partners on the project include Storylines, Wheelers Books, the Storytime Foundation, Duffy Books, Public Libraries of NZ, Read NZ, and Kindello.
Woodley will continue to study the impact of the Little Libraries initiative over time.
One hundred kitsets are already being shipped to early childhood education centres across the country. The Trust’s goal is to reach a further 1000 centres over the next seven years.
“We know the positive influence that books can have in a child’s life, and sparking that love of reading at a young age makes all the difference,” Hearth said.
“Over the years ahead we hope to see the literacy statistics in Aotearoa change for the better.”
For people interested in helping The Values Trust with meeting their literacy goals, there is a “ sponsor a Little Library”-option on the website littlelibraries.co.nz.
