Rowan Spazzoli

Today’s Friday Shoutout goes to Bookdash, one of my favourite social organisations. Bookdash brings together creatives from across the country to write, design and illustrate culturally relevant, open source, African story books for children. (*see the picture description at the bottom of this post for my favourite Bookdash book)

Their website describes them as follows:

Children in South Africa need more books, but they cost too much purchased from publishers. The cheapest books have no publisher – then the only cost is printing. So our participants do the work of publishers in a single day. After that, anyone can get print runs sponsored and put finished books into the hands of children.

We believe every child should own a hundred books by the age of five. In South Africa, that means giving 600 million free books to children who could never afford to buy them. Every day we lose, more children grow up unable to read and write well, and to enjoy the worlds that books open up.

Their books are distributed are developed in 12 hour sprints (known as a bookdash) and then published on their app, website and printed for distribution. They’ve been able to distribute hundreds of thousands across the country in just the two or three years they’ve been around. And they have over 100 titles available.

A close friend of mine, Julia, runs Bookdash (almost singlehandedly) and has done the most phenomenal job. She’s too humble to ever take credit for it, but thanks to her this organisation has become a major game changer for child literacy in South Africa.

If you’d like to check out or support Bookdash, you can do so in the following ways:

• Donate to them directly
• Sign up for the Woolworths MySchool program and add them as a beneficiary
• Join a Bookdash or their mailing list here
• Find them on Facebook or Twitter

Keep up the great work Julia and Team 🙂

Image was taken off the Bookdash Facebook page. I was going to use their logo but then saw this pic. Specifically, the child at the back, in front of the lady with the stripey red jersey, is holding my favourite Bookdash book. It’s called “My Dream in the Drawer” and I had exactly the same reaction as the child when I read the book for the first time 🙂

Blog: 221/365

Song of the day: Came here for love – Sigala

Today I got a notification from WordPress that I’d been on the platform for 6 years. I remember setting up my first blog in my second year, just after exams. I had so much I wanted to write but never got to doing it

And yesterday I got a notification from my internet provider that my website (rowanspazzoli.com) is 1 years old. I kept it hidden from the world for 5 months. I was so scared people would judge.

But here I am. I’ve started consistently writing, which I set out to do 6 years ago. And my momentum keeps pushing me past the worry of judgement.

And I keep on going, one blog in front of the other.

Image was from some research I was doing today. Definitely my favourite tag line ever.

Blog: 217/365

Song of the day: Blur – Song 2

Committing to writing a blog post every day has had some really unexpected benefits. As discussed in a previous post, one of these benefits is that I constantly reflect on my learnings throughout the day to find something to write about.

Another benefit that I realized today is that it has forced me to let go of perfection. Because I’m sending out a post every day, some might not meet my own standards.

Sometimes it feels like I should write more in depth, more thought through work. But I have to shake this feeling. I have to allow myself to feel uncomfortable.

It’s scary. But it’s getting easier. The momentum behind writing every day is pushing me to be more confident in my writing ability and in myself.

And I’m regularly surprised when people enjoy a post when I was uncertain about it.

So even if it isn’t perfect…

Just hit “publish”

Image was taken on a walk down the Liesbeek River today.

This post was inspired by Seth Godins blog today, which you can find here

Blog 47/365. Read more about my #365of25 journey here