Reaching the hardest-to-reach: Lessons from book distribution to ECD centres
Access to quality early childhood development (ECD) has a long-term positive impact on children’s lives: it improves health, attachment, school readiness, literacy and numeracy, school completion, and employment and earnings in adulthood. Yet in South Africa, access to quality ECD services is limited, and highly unequal.
This learning brief unpacks lessons from a pilot that distributed books directly to ECD centres – for the centres, and for children to take home and own – and reflects on their relevance for broader efforts to strengthen ECD provision.
Early book ownership: the promise and the need
In 2025, Book Dash and DGMT’s Umncedi project partnered to increase book ownership while simultaneously testing a new book distribution model: direct delivery to under-resourced ECD centres.
Book Dash is a social impact publisher of open, African picture books for very young children that has worked with a network of distribution partners to get more than 6 million books into South African children’s hands and homes since 2014. Umncedi connects people working with young children to good quality information and resources. Its small grants programme provides small grants 12 to approximately 400-500 ECD centres each year.
The pilot targeted these small grant recipients to receive books. Each month, Umncedi sent Book Dash a list of ~40-60 ECD centres that had applied for, been vetted for and received a small grant. Book Dash selected books, packed the boxes and dispatched the books by courier or Paxi. Each ECD centre received 1 book per child (based on enrolment data provided) and approximately 10 books for the centre. Click on the button below to explore our learnings.