Launching StoryWeaver Kannada: An exciting new YouTube channel!


 

ಸ್ಟೋರಿವೀವರ್, ಈ ಸಲದ ಕನ್ನಡ ರಾಜ್ಯೋತ್ಸವವನ್ನು ಕನ್ನಡ ಯೂಟ್ಯೂಬ್ ಚಾನಲ್ ಆರಂಭಿಸುವ ಮೂಲಕ ಆಚರಿಸುತ್ತಿದೆ. ನಮ್ಮ ರೀಡ್ ಅಲಾಂಗ್ಸ್ ಕತೆಯ ಪುಸ್ತಕಗಳಿಗೆ ದೊರೆತ ಉತ್ತೇಜನದಿಂದ ಪ್ರೇರಿತರಾಗಿ ಯೂಟ್ಯೂಬ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ ಚೆಂದದ  ವಿಡಿಯೋಗಳನ್ನು ಬಿಡುಗಡೆ ಮಾಡಲು ಉತ್ಸುಕರಾಗಿದ್ದೇವೆ. ಸುಮಧುರ ಹಿನ್ನೆಲೆ ಸಂಗೀತ, ವೃತ್ತಿಪರ ಕಲಾವಿದರು ಓದಿರುವ, ಬಲು ಎಚ್ಚರಿಕೆಯಿಂದ ಹೆಣೆದ ಉಪಶೀರ್ಷಿಕೆಗಳಿಂದ ಜೀವಂತಿಕೆ ಪಡೆದ ಈ ಕಥಾ ವಿಡಿಯೋಗಳು ಮಕ್ಕಳನ್ನು ಆಕರ್ಷಿಸಿ ಓದುವ ಹವ್ಯಾಸಕ್ಕೆ ಹಚ್ಚುವುದರಲ್ಲಿ ಯಾವುದೇ ಸಂಶಯವಿಲ್ಲ.

 

ಈ ವಿಡಿಯೋಗಳು ಕತೆಗಳಿಗೆ ಜೀವ ಕೊಡುತ್ತವೆ ಮತ್ತು ಮಕ್ಕಳ ಓದುವ ಪ್ರೀತಿಯನ್ನು ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಮಾಡುತ್ತವೆ. ಈ ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಕತೆಗಳನ್ನು ಮಕ್ಕಳಿಗಾಗಿಯೇ ರಚಿಸಲಾಗಿದ್ದು, 1 ಮತ್ತು 2ನೇ ಹಂತದ ಮಕ್ಕಳಿಗಾಗಿ ಇವೆ. ಮಕ್ಕಳ ಗಮನವನ್ನು ಹಿಡಿದಿಟ್ಟುಕೊಳ್ಳುವಂತೆ ಇಲ್ಲಿಯ ವಿಡಿಯೋಗಳನ್ನು 5 ನಿಮಿಷದ ಕಾಲಮಿತಿಯಲ್ಲಿಯೇ ಇಡಲಾಗಿದೆ. ಸ್ಟೋರಿವೀವರ್ ಪುಟದಲ್ಲಿನ ರೀಡ್ ಅಲಾಂಗ್ ವಿಶೇಷತೆಯನ್ನೂ ಇದು ಒಳಗೊಂಡಿದ್ದು ವಿಶೇಷ ಕಾಳಜಿಯಿಂದ ಇಲ್ಲಿನ ಕತೆಗಳನ್ನು ಅರಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲಾಗಿದೆ. ಇಲ್ಲಿಯ ಶಬ್ದ ಮತ್ತು ಪದಗಳು ಪುನರಾವರ್ತಿತವಾಗುವಂತೆ ಉದ್ದೇಶಪೂರ್ವಕವಾಗಿ ನೋಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲಾಗಿದ್ದು, ಜೋರಾಗಿ ಓದಿ ಆನಂದಿಸುವಂತೆ ರಚಿಸಲಾಗಿದೆ. ಮನಸೆಳೆಯುವ ಬಣ್ಣದ ಚಿತ್ರಗಳು ಹಾಗೂ ಕತೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿನ ಸಾಕಷ್ಟು ನಾಟಕೀಯತೆ ಮಕ್ಕಳ ಮನ ಗೆಲ್ಲಲಿದೆ. 
 
ಯೂಟ್ಯೂಬ್‌ನಲ್ಲಿ ಸ್ಟೋರಿವೀವರ್ ನ ಕನ್ನಡ ಚಾನೆಲ್ ಗೆ ಭೇಟಿ ನೀಡಲು ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಕ್ಲಿಕ್ ಮಾಡಿ ಮತ್ತು ಪ್ರತಿವಾರ ಹೊಸ ವಿಡಿಯೋಗಳನ್ನು ನೋಡಿ ಖುಷಿಪಡಲು ಸಬ್ ಸ್ಕ್ರೈಬ್ ಮಾಡಿ!
 

ಸ್ಟೋರಿವೀವರ್‌ನೊಂದಿಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಓದುವ ಖುಷಿಯನ್ನು ಸಂಭ್ರಮಿಸಿ!

 

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New books on StoryWeaver! 

Presenting ‘The Sustainability Stories- a collection of stories conceptualised and published by not-for-profit organisation Why Waste?, written by young adults, for young adults in the making. Explore concepts of water conservation through the lives of Zelly the Zebra, Hali the Elephant, Lonely Cloud, and many more. Learn about the water cycle, Why Waste’s famous #GlassHalfFull concept, the mindful usage of water, and most of all, inspire young minds to be the change that they wish to see in the world!

Learn about Why Waste's work and the inspiration that led to the creation of the Sustainability Stories, in this conversation with their Founder & CEO, Garvita Gulhati:


Tell us about Why Waste?, and your work in the area of water conservation.

Garvita: Why Waste? is a not-for-profit organisation, with a team of like-minded youth who are taking water positivity to the world stage, by means of innovative education and ideas that bring about a systemic change. Why Waste? was founded in 2015 with the aim of changing the mindsets of people towards natural resources, specifically water and envisioning building a world of water conscious citizens. Why Waste?’s #GlassHalfFull movement to conserve water in restaurants went viral in 2019 and continues to have a massive positive impact on the industry with the support of NRAI. Why Waste? has been recognised as an ‘Ashoka Youth Venture’ in 2016. In 2020, the team became India’s largest youth-led movement by an organisation working towards water conservation and have been named as “Water Heros” by Republic TV in a collaborative initiative with the Government of India (Ministry of Jal Shakti). 

Some of our initiatives include: 

The Urban Water Challenge which is an annual child development programme that helps rural children to come up with innovative ideas towards sustainability. 

Prerana- Story-telling sessions at NGOs and rural schools where the team talk about the sustainable stories created by Why Waste?.

Annual World Water Day Event where the team of Why Waste? celebrate water and demonstrate the importance of water conservation with fun-filled activities.

Hopeschooling, a recent initiative by Why Waste? in order to spread hope, motivation and raise awareness about pressing issues in the current world. This initiative was started during the peak of Covid-19, to encourage people to be better.

 

What inspired you to conceptualise the Sustainability Stories book series?

Garvita: I remember celebrating more birthdays at orphanages than at parties - Always having to finish all the food that I took on my plate. Through my early life, I learnt to empathize and enforce positive habits. The social sensitivity in me comes from practices like this, inculcated through my formative years. Understanding how crucial those experiences were, I conceptualised this series.Through the stories in this series, we hope that  children inculcate these same values from a very young age, in a way best known to them - through fables and fairytales.

We are at a point where the world is now restructuring and reconsidering what the youth learn. The team at Why Waste? decided to take a step towards this by introducing stories that inspire our generation to not just love our planet, but also work towards a more holistic and sustainable world. Thereby, shaping our futures.

 

We would love to know more about the making of these books, especially the "For students, by students" aspect.

Garvita: Being a 100% youth-led movement, Why Waste? has always had wonderful young people volunteer and our goal is to always ensure that they are using their best talents to support our efforts and channel their changemaking energy. When the book was conceptualised, it was almost an obvious choice to have young writers, editors and illustrators create the entire book. It was fascinating to see the energy and new-world concepts that came in with this and truly a perfect amalgamation of varied perspectives. 

I would like to thank the entire creative team of writers & designers for putting together a wonderful collection of inspiring stories.

What is the message that you hope to share through these stories?

Garvita: Each story talks about taking the lead and making a difference. We hope that this series will create a conservationist mindset in our future generations. Tomorrow may be far, but what we make of our children today is what we will see tomorrow.

How did you get to know about StoryWeaver, and what prompted you to open-license the Sustainability Series and make it available on our platform?

Garvita: I’ve been reading Pratham Books since I was a little girl. I still remember this particular book with Warli illustrations all over intrigued me so much I went on to not only enjoy the story but also learn Warli painting after that and create a lot of art. That’s the power of Pratham Books!  

With the world spending more time online due to COVID-19, I learned that Pratham Books was online too, giving access to their wonderful books via StoryWeaver. I was incredibly intrigued by the power of this platform. Hence, open-licensing and putting our books out on StoryWeaver became an absolute no-brainer! The Sustainability Series is available to purchase on Amazon, but we are going to change the format to make it available for free and then let people donate as much as they want. This would also go in tandem with our work with StoryWeaver! 

We are truly inspired by the work happening here and the phenomenal independence given to creators. Moreover, the simple goal of getting stories to as many young people as possible is truly what mattered the most, and made us really want to share our books here too!

Thank you, Garvita and Team 'Why Waste?'. We are delighted to have you on board as publishers on StoryWeaver!


Click on the link to read the Sustainability Series on StoryWeaver:  https://bit.ly/37apTFP

Learn more about Why Waste? here.

 

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This Children's Day, Pratham Education Foundation and StoryWeaver are delighted to announce their partnership to add to the repository of reading resources to help build foundational reading skills among young children. The announcement is the start of a process in which stories developed by teams from Pratham Education Foundation will be hosted on StoryWeaver. Having these storybooks under the CC BY 4.0 license on StoryWeaver makes them available to a larger audience worldwide, and the books are free to read, download and use. At the same time, these books will give the StoryWeaver community new stories to translate, giving children around the world access to more books in their own languages.

To kick off the collaboration, 50 stories from Pratham are being launched on StoryWeaver today.  These books will be part of StoryWeaver's new collection for Emergent Readers, which are storybooks with simple text, colourful illustrations and familiar words, to help introduce children to the #JoyOfReading

Explore the storybooks here:  https://bit.ly/38DUe25

While most of these 50 storybooks are in Hindi, the partnership aims at building a collection of 200 books in 11 Indian languages and English in the next two months, and scaling the repository to 1000 books in the coming months. The languages include Assamese, Bangla, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

The first 5 years of a child’s life  are crucial, with over 85% of brain development occurring at this stage. Fostering reading and development abilities at this stage has a positive impact on learning outcomes, and preparing children for school. At present, millions of children do not have access to quality Early Childhood Education. In keeping with United Nations’ SDG 4  - Quality Education for All, the National Education Policy 2020 has laid out a blueprint for the universal provisioning of quality early childhood development, care and education. The key priorities of the National Education Policy 2020 include the achievement of Foundational Literacy for all primary school students by 2025, and the creation of enjoyable, inspirational books for children.

Suzanne Singh, Chairperson, Pratham Books, says: ​ “Children’s Day serves as an important reminder of our responsibilities towards nurturing our children to achieve their potential. We are delighted to partner with Pratham and leverage the power of open licensing, to address the inequity in the availability of storybooks for emergent readers. Pratham’s vast experience with early learning is reflected in the content produced by them and we are delighted to make this content available to the rest of the world so that children have the opportunity to learn to read, and read to learn.”

Rukmini Banerji, Chief Executive Officer, Pratham Education Foundation, says: “We, at Pratham, have long believed that for learning to read and for loving to read, children must have easy access to a wide variety of stories at all times. We love stories and use stories extensively in our programs. Since StoryWeaver was born, we have been big admirers and users of StoryWeaver. We are also producers of stories. Every year we also generate a lot of stories ourselves in many regional languages for use in our own programs. Thus, the new partnership with StoryWeaver enables us to share our stories with a wider audience and to add to the growing repository of reading material that is available to children in India and across the world. Our collaboration with StoryWeaver is yet another step towards the dream of every child in India reading a story every day.”

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