Wordworks learns on the other side of the world!
October 2022
Rotary District 9350 from South Africa and Rotary District 2390 in Sweden arranged for a team from South Africa to visit Sweden in October 2022. This cross-cultural exchange gave the Wordworks team a chance to explore new approaches to early childhood literacy programs and share insights from South Africa’s own early childhood education landscape.
Two members of the Wordworks team, three teachers and a Rotarian had the privilege of visiting Sweden and working with Rotary International. Rotary International is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders who provide humanitarian service and help build peace and goodwill. One of the Rotary Foundations Programmes include the Vocational Training Teams (VTT) where groups of professionals travel abroad to share their expertise and to learn more about the best practices.
Rotary District 9350 from South Africa and Rotary District 2390 in Sweden, arranged for a team from South Africa, to visit Sweden in October 2022. The aim was to learn more about how schools in both countries support literacy and basic schooling in pre-school and early grades in primary school.
The Wordworks team got to witness many enlightening practices such as visiting the Malmö university where they deliver their research on children with another mother tongue other than Swedish. We visited Red Cross international and learnt about immigration in Sweden and how immigrants are accommodated and supported to integrate into the Swedish language and culture whilst also maintaining their mother-tongue. Sweden supports 140 immigrant Languages besides Swedish and English.
The team also shared the programmes that Wordworks offers for parents to support their child’s learning, whilst they got to learn many things about Swedish culture. Colleen Diedericks and Bukelwa Yuze share,”We learnt a lot from the Swedish Rotarians and schools about how and why the Swedish schools function so successfully. Compulsory schooling from age 7 is free to everyone right up to Upper secondary schools as well as for university, college or higher vocational training. All children are integrated into their schooling system and special needs and multilingualism are accommodated and supported”.
