Ons verleen eerder noodhulp as om net te lees.

Verleen means provide, render, or grant. In this sentence, verleen noodhulp is a very natural combination meaning give emergency help or administer first aid.

Why not gee?

• gee also means give, and it is more everyday and general
• verleen sounds a bit more formal and is especially common with words like hulp, bystand, toestemming, and steun

So Ons verleen noodhulp sounds more idiomatic than Ons gee noodhulp, although the second one can still be understandable.

Yes, noodhulp is written as one word.

That is very normal in Afrikaans, which often forms compound nouns as a single word. Here:

• nood = emergency, distress, need
• hulp = help

Together, noodhulp means emergency help, often first aid depending on the context.

Because Afrikaans main clauses usually follow the verb-second pattern.

In Ons verleen eerder noodhulp:

• Ons is the first element
• verleen is the finite verb, so it comes second
• eerder comes after the verb

So the order is natural Afrikaans word order.

You could move eerder to the front for emphasis:

• Eerder verleen ons noodhulp as om net te lees

But the original sentence is the more neutral order.

Here as means than.

In Afrikaans, as is used after comparative or contrastive expressions like this one. So:

• eerder ... as ... = rather ... than ...

That means Ons verleen eerder noodhulp as om net te lees has the structure:

• rather provide first aid
• than just read

So this as is not an if word here. It is part of a comparison.

This is an infinitive construction.

• lees = read
• te lees = to read
• om ... te lees = to read, as an infinitive phrase

After as in this kind of comparison, Afrikaans often uses om te before the second action:

• eerder X as om Y te doen = rather X than to do Y

So:

• as om net te lees = than to just read

You can think of om as introducing the infinitive phrase, while te marks the infinitive.

Because net modifies the whole infinitive idea to read.

So:

• om net te lees = to just read

In Afrikaans, words like net often come before te + infinitive. That is the normal placement.

So:

• om net te lees is correct
• om te net lees is not natural

Ons can mean both we and us in Afrikaans.

Afrikaans does not distinguish those two forms the way English does.

Examples:

• Ons lees = We read
• Hy sien ons = He sees us

In your sentence, ons means we because it is the subject of the verb verleen.

Sometimes yes, because liewer can also mean rather. But eerder ... as ... is a very common way to express a contrast between two options.

A rough difference is:

• liewer often expresses personal preference very directly
• eerder often works well in comparisons or contrasts

So eerder fits this sentence very naturally.

If you are learning the pattern in this sentence, eerder ... as om ... is a good structure to remember.

Not necessarily. Afrikaans, like English, can leave the object unstated when the meaning is general or already understood from context.

So net te lees can simply mean:

• just to read
• just to be reading
• just to read about it

The sentence does not need to name the thing being read unless that detail matters.