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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