Wordworks

Wordworks is a South African non-profit organisation focused on early language and literacy development in the first eight years of children’s lives.

Since 2005, we have worked in under-resourced communities with the adults best positioned to impact young children’s language and literacy development—parents and caregivers, family and community members, home visitors, early childhood development practitioners, and Grade R to Grade 3 teachers.

We work collaboratively to grow an informed, capable, resourced, and motivated network of schools, organisations, and institutions that promote the importance of and work effectively towards improving children’s early language and literacy through their association with our programmes and materials.

Wordworks offers training, resources, and support for partners who wish to use our early language and literacy programmes in their own networks. These programmes are sustained through ongoing relationships with Wordworks, including refresher training and events, input and guidance, access to resources and opportunities, shared learning, and support for programme monitoring and evaluation.

We contribute to language and early literacy learning through the ongoing development and refinement of our programmes and materials, as well as through publications, conference presentations, and a wide range of practical open-access resources drawn from and tested in our programmes. These resources are available to the public as free downloads on our website and for sale through our catalogue, public workshops, conferences, and events.

Our mission – We advocate for the importance of early language and literacy foundations, offer programmes for homes, schools, and communities that enable young children to thrive, and support stakeholders through resource-based capacity building, knowledge sharing, and collaboration.