Raising money to support indigenous literacy and education
Saturday 13 December, Taguan (🗺️ 274 Abercrombie St, Darlington)
👉 Pre-order some food! 🔗 Taguan Pre-Order Form
Tickets: Free (🔗 link to ticket on EventBrite)
Donation link: https://fundraising.ilf.org.au/brewmanshu
What:
Instant Karma is a charity event where we come together to cup instant specialty coffees (the granular, dissolvable sort) to raise funds for a charity.
Think of it like the Great Morning Tea except it’s instant coffee and you just have to bring a tasting cup ☕
We’ll be cupping 9 specialty instants from 5 different roasters (worth +$200 in total) and raising funds for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.
If you didn’t know, specialty instants are good now!
Why:
Reading and writing were two things I loved doing as a kid.
I dunno how they do it nowadays but back then, Ms M would sit us down on the floor and read to us from a meter high book. I wonder if these kind of books are still around?
Story time really shaped me.
My father read to us at home from all sorts of story books. I think listening to stories and watching them being read made me into a reader and later a young writer.
In fact, if you were to ask me in primary school what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would’ve said “a writer” (or something to that effect).
Part of the many layers that make up Sydney Coffee Tour and brewmanshu is idea of going back to what I loved as a kid.
I don’t mean I loved coffee as a kid* – in my youth coffee was Blend 43.
What I mean is: coffee gives me space to write and maybe a small audience of readers**.
I like writing because writing is a way of giving back to a community.
This is why I’d like to raise money for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.
Their purpose is to support literacy and education in remote communities and they do this through three main community-led programs: Book Buzz, Book Supply and Community Publishing.
Book Buzz aims to develop pre-literacy skills and familiarity with books for babies and toddlers, through a regular story-time session. Parents and carers are supported and are given the tools to talk about, read and share books with their children, in First Languages and in English.
Book Supply gifts books that aim to interest and engage the Community in reading and sharing books together. The books are carefully chosen so they are culturally appropriate, and between 50% – 55% are by Indigenous authors or illustrators. The books are distributed by road, air or sea to crèches, playgroups, schools, women’s centres, and health centres who use them in different ways.
Community Publishing supports adults and children to write and illustrate their own stories in languages of their choice. The ILF publish the books and gift them back to the Community. These books are highly desired because they often share a local story that a Community is familiar with and many are written in First Languages.
Source: Indigenous Literacy Foundation, Reading Opens Doors Fact Sheet
What I see reflected back in these three programs is my own literacy journey: story time pre-literacy; reading books from mail order catalogs like the Lucky Book Club and; writing my own stories for my friends to read.
I couldn’t think of a more worthy cause than to support literacy and education in remote communities.
* The Child Who Loves Blend 43 sounds like it could be a good book title though
** Thank you dear reader you make all the difference!
brewmanshu 