Almost a quarter of children living in the Liverpool local council area, south-west of Sydney, arrive at school not ready for learning.
Underdeveloped early literacy skills mean a lifetime of playing catch-up, but research says children rarely do.
PaintLiverpoolREaD was introduced to change this statistic.
The program is part of the national Paint the Town REaD initiative, of which Barbie Bates is the executive director.
Ms Bates said the movement started more than 20 years ago when educators realised children were starting school and struggling to learn to read.
"Half the children who were not ready to learn in kindergarten never ended up catching up in later years," she said.
Liverpool's efforts to improve literacy
The Australian Early Development Census found that in 2018, developmentally vulnerable children made up nearly a quarter of those starting school in the Liverpool area.
Andrea Giunta, from Ashcroft Public School, is part of the working group running the PaintLiverpoolREaD playgroups.
Ms Giunta said facilitators sing, dance, and read with the children in a classroom filled with posters, books, and creative activities.
"This is an early intervention program and we're in this area for a particular reason," said Ms Giunta.
Jessica Anton, a senior speech pathologist at Liverpool Hospital, regularly collaborates with the working group.
"We know that children's oral language and pre-literacy at school entry are strong predictors of their later academic, social, and even employment opportunities and outcomes," Ms Anton said.
"It's crucial that positive literacy routines are built into their early childhood, so that they have better success later."
A sense of community
Yara and Nora Khaled are regulars at the Liverpool playgroups.
At the last session, the sisters walked in proudly holding two huge boxes of doughnuts they'd brought to share with their playgroup friends.
Their mum, Yemen Alsayadi, has been bringing her eldest since she moved to Australia five years ago.
"It's very important to me to come here," Ms Alsayadi said.
Mum Nathalie Phan is another regular.
Having seen the positive effects on her daughter Athena, she decided to start bringing her son.
"Both my kids are born premature, and my daughter had a speech delay. They [doctors] said a playgroup and socialising, singing would help her," she said.
"My son has mild cerebral palsy, and after my experience with Athena, I thought this would definitely help him socialise with other children."
Ms Phan and her children live with her husband's Vietname parents, while Ms Phan herself has a Spanish background.
"The good thing is that here they [children] are hearing even more languages. They walk in and see different backgrounds and religions."
Literacy not bound by language
Dr Paola Escudero Neyra, linguist and professor at Western Sydney University, hopes to deepen her own collaboration with the PaintLiverpoolREaD project.
Her team at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour & Development wants to help children in the program become biliterate as well as bilingual.
"It's particularly helpful when emphasised in different languages, rather than just one," said Dr Escudero Neyra.
She said one of the biggest benefits of PaintLiverpoolREaD was its insistence on multilingualism.
"It's not about English — it's about making the connection between sounds and symbols, be they objects, colours or later, literacy in terms of writing on a page," said Ms Escudero Neyra.
Sam Schoeler-Jones, a clinical specialist with Sing&Grow Australia, often tries to sing with the children in a variety of languages.
"If your first language is Arabic, for example, then speak Arabic to your child," said Ms Schoeler-Jones.
"We will speak English to them, and children are like sponges. They will pick it all up and will grow up speaking at least two languages."
'Pass on your first language, and your accent'
Ms Escudero Neyra said for kids in Liverpool, this opportunity will become their 'superpower'.
"This country still has a monolingual mindset but monolingual Australians should be open to this (multilingual) way of looking at the world," she said.
"Researchers in this field see speaking and writing in only one language as a limitation."
Ms Escudero Neyra said parents and carers should be proud to pass on their mother language.
"Pass on your first language, and your accent. Why is that a problem?
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