A donation of free advertising to the initiative campaign during the week around Heritage Day in 2012, drove more than half of the campaign’s total traffic to the Nal'ibali website) for the month of September, connecting users with a wealth of resources to promote their children’s literacy development.

More recently, Kagiso Digital helped to promote Nal’ibali’s World Read Aloud Day drive, which called on South Africans to read aloud the same story on the same day – with a total of more than 13 500 read aloud to on World Read Aloud Day on Wednesday, 6 March.

In line with its commitment to giving something back to the country and helping to address social challenges, Kagiso Media earmarks inventory over a number of its digital properties for Nal'ibali over certain seasons. During these periods, Nal'ibali has access to prime placements on properties such as Howzit MSN South Africa, Skype, Zalebs, East Coast Radio and Jacaranda FM websites.

Nal'ibali (isiXhosa for "here's the story") is a national reading-for-enjoyment campaign aimed at sparking children’s potential through storytelling and reading, and giving parents, teachers and caregivers the support, tools and stories they need to grow their children’s literacy from birth.

The Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA) – an independent research and development unit based at UCT – co-initiated the Nal'ibali Initiative in 2012 to help address the challenge of literacy development in South Africa by driving what needs to become a long-term national reading for enjoyment movement.

Nal'ibali partners are also working hard to make sure there are appropriate African language and English storybooks and other reading materials for everyone. The stock is increasing all the time, with a growing collection of stories in a range of South African languages in Nal’ibali’s weekly print supplements, website and recently launched mobi site.

Says Steven van Hemert, executive producer at MSN South Africa: "We are proud to support Nal'ibali's aims of nurturing a passion for reading among kids and their parents by providing a wealth of stories and resources to people in their home languages. By getting children excited about reading, Nal'ibali has a major role to play in promoting a meaningful and sustainable culture of reading for enjoyment, sorely needed in SA given that research has shown only 5% of parents read to their children in our country."