Book Dash began in 2014 as a vision project among friends who pooled their collective skills in the publishing industry to flood South Africa with new, high-quality, affordable African picture books for all in response the lack of access to books for children in low-income communities and the clear evidence of the importance to access to books in for pre-school children.
To change the systems that keep books inaccessible to most families and preschool children, Book Dash designed an open publishing model that harnesses professional creative volunteers to create beautiful new, open-licensed books for children… in just 12 hours! This unique model vastly reduces the time and costs involved in creating beautiful, relevant picturebooks for the children who need them. Our team then works with partners to translate, print, distribute and share the books as widely as possible to increase ownership and access to high-quality books for all children from a young age.
Since the start in 2014 we have been able to produced 300 books. Over 3 million books have been printed and distributed to children in resource poor communities in South Africa and through our Open source Website. It is estimated that 4 million children in South Africa have been impacted by Book Dash books. They have also reached thousands of children globally and are read in 12 different countries.
The 12-hour publishing model itself has been replicated in locations as disparate as Lebanon to Laos. The sharing of this model, and support for those replicating it, is a significant contribution to the global need for more diverse, representative and locally-originated storybooks to support children's literacy and reading journey. Our books have been accessed over 6 million times online.
Get in touch with us - the Book Dash model is free for anyone to replicate and adapt. You only have to acknowledge us.
All the books made by Book Dash are published on our website for free under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. This means anyone can freely read, download, print, translate and share the books.
