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 in Cape Town. Heartened by the quality of the books and the enthusiasm of the creative volunteers, 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 has the potential to revolutionise 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, with the day-to-day running of the organisation fulfilled by the Management Team.
Recognition for Book Dash
Since its inception, Book Dash has received recognition for both our innovative book creation model, and the social impact of the work we do.
Library of Congress Best Practice Honoree
In September Book Dash 2020 was recognised as one of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Best Practice Honorees for 2020. The Literacy Awards honour organisations doing exemplary, innovative and replicable work. Book Dash was one of 15 organisations honoured for its implementation of best practices in literacy promotion. It was the only African organisation to receive this recognition this year.
Global Network for Early Years Bookgifting
In 2019, Book Dash was welcomed as a member of 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.
Community Chest Impumelelo Social Innovation Awards
Book Dash was honoured to be selected as the “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, to vastly reduce costs involved in creating and getting high-quality, local books to all children. We’re motivated by this recognition as we move towards our next goal of a million books by the end of 2020, and closer to a world where every child owns one hundred books by the age of five.
Open Publishing Awards
“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.”
South African Early Childhood Development Awards
The National Development Agency awarded Book Dash the “Best ECD Publication of the year” in 2015 for Tortoise finds his home.
MTN App of the Year Awards
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.