FINALLY! The results for Pratham Books’ Retell, Remix and Rejoice contest 2019 are here! A big thank you to all the participants for taking part, and being super patient with us as the judges read through each of your wonderful stories.
 
This year, we received 70 entries. It’s magical to witness the increase in the number and variety of language entries! English entries leading with 37 count definitely did not dim the light of the language entries which were 13, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 for languages Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali and Marathi, respectively.

The lovely stories were graded with much patience and difficulty (they cut really close!) by the amazing team of editors at Pratham Books! They read and re-read the bunch and came up with the three top stories.

Many congratulations to… drum roll please!

This illustration by Rajiv Eipe originally appeared in the print version of 'The Boy and the Drum' by Pratham Books. 

• Aru for The Mehendi Boy (English)
• Bhakti Verma for Ek Kahani ki Kahani (Hindi)
• Aparna Chaubey for Agali Khiladi (Hindi)

Each finalist will receive a gift hamper of books from Pratham Books and will have a one-on-one feedback session with a Pratham Books editor. One final story will then be chosen for illustration.

You shall hear from us shortly.

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Here’s a post by Purvi Shah, Director – StoryWeaver, to mark a special time in StoryWeaver’s world: Our 4^th birthday

Say hello to Manisha, a young girl from the Mudia community that lives in Central India. The Mudia community speak Gondi, an indigenous language with 2 million speakers. Despite the large population, surprisingly, this is the first book Manisha has ever read in her own language! 

 

The world has made an ambitious commitment to the goal of universal literacy by 2030, where all children will be able to read. For this to be achieved, having high quality reading materials in languages that children use and understand is essential. But the global book gap means that millions of children like Manisha lack access to these critically needed reading resources. 

 

StoryWeaver was launched 4 years ago on International Literacy Day to address the inequities that exist for children’s books: not enough books, in not enough languages, and  very poor access. When we launched, our goal was  to create a participatory framework where content creators and users could collaborate with each other to create joyful reading material in multiple languages. We believe this will have a multiplier effect to address the scarcity of multilingual reading resources that exists in India and globally.

 

The book that Manisha was holding was created on StoryWeaver by a group of 20 educator volunteers who translated  300 books into Gondi, reviewed and published them on the platform in just a few days. The books were then printed locally and distributed in Manisha’s village as part of a community literacy programme.

Today, the platform hosts 15,500 books in over 200 languages of the world. This scale would not have been possible without the power of collaboration:

Publishers like Room to Read amd Pratham Books, who have open licensed their content at scale. Linguists and translators who have introduced us to new languages. Educators in every nook and corner of the world who have welcomed us into their classrooms and the hearts of their students. 

With millions of users from over 150 countries, StoryWeaver is harnessing the power of open licences, collaboration, and technology to create a societal platform that is providing open access to thousands of  books in local languages to nurture the next generation of readers and learners. 

None of this would  have been possible without your support. Thank you. Times 4!

 

 

(We would love for you to join the conversation by leaving your thoughts in the Comments section, or on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)

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