Origins and recognition

Book Dash began in 2014 as a vision project among friends who wished to pool their collective skills in the publishing industry to flood the country with new, high-quality, affordable African storybooks. The first Book Dash events were held in May and June 2014 in Cape Town. 

Heartened by the quality of the books and the creative volunteers’ enthusiasm, co-founders Arthur Attwell, Michelle Matthews and Tarryn-Anne Anderson established Book Dash as a registered not-for-profit, voluntary association with the aim of continuing to create, print and distribute more books to children – and to prove that high-quality books in many languages can be affordably produced and distributed.

The finely-tuned and continually-perfected Book Dash model is revolutionising local content creation and access to books in South Africa and in under-resourced communities worldwide. 

Today, the three co-founders sit on the Board of Directors, and the Management Team drives the day-to-day running of the organisation.

Since its inception, Book Dash has received recognition for both our innovative book creation model, and our social impact. Awards and recognition include:

The nomination indicates that our work is both relevant and influential, and underscores our positive impact on the broader literacy community and publishing industry.

Book Dash was selected as one of three winners of Theirworld’s Education Innovation Awards, which support exciting, proven innovations to scale up their impact. 

The award included grant funding, mentoring and masterclasses to help us expand our work to reach even more children. Theirworld described the winners as “strong, innovative and passionately committed to achieving systems change for marginalised learners.”

In 2023, Book Dash was shortlisted for a World Literacy Award for Contribution to Literacy by an Organisation. The awards recognise individuals and organisations for outstanding endeavours that promote literacy learning.

The selection committee noted that Book Dash’s model for creating high-quality, relevant children’s books very quickly and cost-effectively is a world first:all the books made by our creative superheroes are published under a Creative Commons license, and they’re used by more than 100 organisations worldwide to support literacy development and increase impact.

In March 2023, Book Dash was invited to demonstrate our model at the 60th Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy, the world’s pre-eminent children’s book fair.  Over two days, we showed off our unique publishing approach to the world as two teams of African writers, illustrators and designers created brand-new picture books.

We also had a spot on the official programme to share the books with the audience and discuss the unique creative process, and our Executive Director Julia appeared on the panel discussion of the Global Network for Early Years Bookgifting.

Book Dash was selected as a finalist in the category for “Best Rising NGO” in the CSI Legacy Awards, hosted by CSR News. The judges applauded Book Dash’s creativity, bold vision and growth in reach.

Book Dash was selected from among 150 organisations as the winner of the 2021 Nedbank Private Wealth Innovation Award.

The judges highlighted two innovations as particularly impactful: our virtual book creation events, and our increased distribution of printed books to children when we partnered with organisations that sent out books to families with food parcels and education packs during national lockdowns.

Book Dash was named a Library of Congress Literacy Awards Best Practice Honoree for 2020. The Awards honour organisations doing exemplary, innovative and replicable work. Book Dash was one of 15 organisations honoured for its best practices in literacy promotion. It was the only African organisation to receive this recognition this year.

Our collection of books was vetted by the Digital Public Goods Alliance and included as one of its inaugural Digital Public Goods in the Foundational Literacy and Early Grade Reading category.

In 2019, Book Dash was welcomed as a member to the EU Read Global Network for Early Years Bookgifting. This is a network of organisations around the world that promote the best practise of bookgifting to young children. The network was established to foster shared learning, inspiration and innovation among the members. Currently, Book Dash is the only member from the African continent.

Book Dash was named “Disruptor of the Year” at the 2019 Community Chest Impumelelo Social Innovations Awards. This award recognises the innovation of our game-changing publishing process and distribution methods, which vastly reduce costs involved in creating and getting high-quality, local books to all children.

Book Dash was recognised in the inaugural 2019 Open Publishing Awards for “best Open Content.” The awards were established to promote and celebrate a variety of open projects in publishing. The judges “were simply blown away with the publishing model and how this project leverages open to achieve such an enormous impact with very few resources.”

In 2019, the Book Dash App was a Top 3 finalist in the Education category of the MTN App of the Year Awards. Our app has more than 100,000 downloads, and people around the world love reading our books there. 

The South African National Development Agency awarded Book Dash the “Best ECD Publication of the year” in 2015 for Tortoise finds his home.