Books and Biscuits started in April 2019 in a park in Sir Lowry’s Pass Village. Two ex-teachers and a committed home-school student with a passion for Christ, envisioned changing a community by sharing God’s love, through practical acts of faith to bring about hope. Why Books and Biscuits? Through stories, children can learn so much about the world! It unites the storyteller with the listeners and brings people of different backgrounds together. Homemade biscuits are a labour of love and we hoped that through this expression of hospitality, the children will feel cared for. We believe that learning through a variety of stories will provide an opportunity for us to reach out by living out our faith, instilling hope and showing God’s love to those around us.

Basic English skills are improved through the activities and conversations during these afternoon sessions. Spending quality time together is a focus as we have been building trusting relationships and serving the children. A register is taken at each session so that the children are encouraged to attend regularly, in this manner relationships and friendships are being built on week after week. Tuesday sessions have more of an academic focus and Friday sessions have a strong emphasis on Bible stories and learning more about Jesus Christ. We focus on foundational literacy and numeracy skills, combining games and tasks that are fun and easy to learn, with more specific learning tasks based on the needs of the children in attendance. Teaching values and life skills are an important component of our programme.

We soon realised that our vision of sitting under the trees, reading books, practising our mathematics, playing sports, sharing the Good News of the Bible and enjoying biscuits and juice together was not where the story was going to stop. After praying for, and receiving much help from the Sir Lowry's Pass Community members, our organisation grew beyond the beauty of Books and Biscuits and has emerged as a much more diverse organisation, 4THE1. Books and Biscuits will always be at the heart of our outreach.

Education empowers people and inspires children to learn, grow and question the world around them. As trained educators in South Africa, we were privileged enough to work in schools where we were exposed to excellent training and 21st-century learning skills. As a result of this, we knew that we had to share our passion and experience and do more in the world that we live in.