StoryWeaver believes that every child deserves to have joyful reading material in her mother tongue. To this end, we launched the Freedom to Read 2019 campaign with the ambition of building open digital libraries in 100 local languages. But we could not have done it without our amazing partners. From literacy organisations to reading champions, our partners share our commitment to joyful reading resources for children in their own mother tongues.

Partners from India


Azad India Foundation (AIF), Bihar

AIF was founded by Yuman Hussain in 1998 to seed initiatives in education and primary healthcare. AIF has learning centres across 73 villages in Kishanganj district and the children impacted are aged between 6-9 years. AIF is StoryWeaver's partner to translate storybooks into Surjapuri, a language spoken in pockets of Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Bangladesh by 1.2 million people. Read the storybooks translated in Surjapuri here and their story here.


Unnati Institute for Social and Educational Change, Maharashtra

Unnati ISEC has been working in the district of Akola in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra with children from the Korku tribal community since the last five years. They are translating storybooks from Marathi to Korku. Unnati ISEC works towards the improvement of literacy skills of these children. They are StoryWeaver's partner to create a library of storybooks on Korku. Since Korku does not have a script, the organisation is translating the storybooks using the Devanagari script. Read the storybooks translated in Korku here and their story here.


SNS Foundation, Rajasthan

The SNS Foundation leads community-focused initiatives in Rajasthan. They are working in government schools to bridge the learning gaps among children. They partnered with StoryWeaver to create a library in Marwari by translating from Hindi to Marwari. The Marwari language is spoken widely in Rajasthan with about 20 million speakers. Read the storybooks translated in Marwari here and their story here.


Suchana, West Bengal

Suchana set out in 2005 to try to solve the problem of low learning levels among many adivasi primary school-going children in Birbhum, West Bengal. For part of the solution, they settled on the fact that when Santal and Kora children start school they do not understand much of what they are expected to learn to read, because all teaching, and all learning materials are in Bengali. They therefore, partnered with StoryWeaver to create storybooks in Kora and Santali from Bengali. Read the storybooks translated here and their story here.


Little Readers' Nook, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka

Little Readers' Nook believes in the power of good children's literature to inspire young minds. They offer book appreciation, language, life skills and creative communication classes for children in the 2-10 age group. As part of the Freedom to Read campaign, Little Readers' Nook is helping build bilingual libraries in English-Kutchi and English-Tulu to help children in cities get closer to their mother tongue languages. Read the storybooks translated in Kutchi here.


North East Educational Trust (NEET), Assam

NEET runs a library programme at government schools in Guwahati and in Kamrup, a rural district in Assam. NEET's scope of work includes setting up vibrant functional community libraries. NEET is building a local language library of early readers in Assamese for use in library interventions for Freedom to Read 2019. Read the storybooks translated in Assamese here.

Global Partners


AfLIA (African Library Information Associations and Institutions), Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda

As children grow up all over Africa, the mother tongue is most largely the first language for communication and understanding of concepts. If they read books in local languages they will be familiar with many concepts in the language they are familiar with. It is with this intent that AFLIA joined hands with StoryWeaver to translate storybooks in Igbo, Hausa, Fante, Ewe, Yoruba, Kikuyu, Luganda, Swahili and Zulu. They have collaborated with librarians from five countries in Africa through StoryWeaver's hackathon model and these storybooks will be used in their "Read Africa Read" project. Read the translated storybooks here and their story here.


Darakht-e Danesh Library, Afghanistan

The Darakht-e Danesh Library (DD Library) is a digital repository of open educational resources (OERs) for teachers, students. The library was created to increase access to quality, locally adapted educational resources and to support teachers to adapt, create and share their own resources. The DD Library currently houses more than 3,000 resources in Dari, Pashto, English, and minority languages like Nooristani, Uzbeki and Hazaragi. They partnered with StoryWeaver to translate storybooks in Farsi and Pashto. Read the translated storybooks here.


Right To Play, Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda and Pakistan

Right To Play trains teachers and facilitators in play-based learning in 16 different countries, primarily for education and psychosocial support. A number of Right To Play's country teams in Africa have requested support in literacy, particularly in accessing children's books in local languages. They partnered with StoryWeaver to create a digital library of open-source books in Dagbani, Portuguese, Ewe, Asante Twi, Bambara, Kinyarwanda, Urdu and Arabic. Read the translated storybooks here.


REHMA, South Asia

REHMA is an independent publishing house based out of San Diego, California dedicated to producing books, learning resources and bilingual storybooks in South Asian languages. They cater to diaspora communities who are interested in learning their mother tongue languages. These communities are located in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and the Middle East. REHMA partnered with StoryWeaver to create English-Urdu bilingual storybooks. Read the translated storybooks here.

Language Champions


Agnes N.S. Nyendwa, Zambia

Writer, translator, editor and poet, Agnes N.S. Nyendwa is translating books into her mother tongue Chinyanja, a Bantu language, which is spoken widely in Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique. She has noticed a huge gap for children's books in Chinyanja and wants to translate and raise funds for these books to be made available in print or digitally to a wider audience in her country. Read the translated storybooks here and her story here.


Amit Dudave, Maharashtra

Teacher and translator Amit Dudave is translating stories into Pawari, a tribal language spoken in parts of Maharashtra. Amit has also worked as a translator with The State Council Educational Research and Training (SCERT) on a dictionary. Amit says that many of his students fail to express themselves in the language they are being taught in. So if they are given study material or books in their mother tongue, then they will be attracted towards learning. Read the translated storybooks here.


Ana Jovic, Serbia

A Serbian language teacher by profession, Ana Jovic loves to translate books. Ana has played an important role in our Freedom to Read 2019 campaign and has reached her goal of translating 50 stories into Serbian, moving on to a pledge of translating one story a day till the end of 2019. Read the translated storybooks here and her story here.


Ankit Dwivedi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan

PhD scholar and researcher Ankit Dwivedi loves to write and tell stories. He is translating stories into Bundeli or Bundelkhandi. He is a native of Lalitpur, a city that lies at the heart of Bundelkhand. He speaks a dialect of Bundelkhandi and uses the Devanagri script to write it. Ankit’s research work during his masters programme has been a qualitative study of a local language newspaper run by women which has influenced him to explore local language learning possibilities for children. Though there are millions, according to Ankit, who speak Bundelkhandi, there is a dearth of interesting and engaging reading material for children in the region. Read the translated storybooks here and his story here.


Kaye Suscang, Philippines

Filipino writer and translator Kaye is a native speaker of the language and has edited Filipino manuscripts and resources for use in public schools. She feels children learn best by reading books in a language that they understand. In Philippines there are very few resources written in Filipino that children can access for free. Read the translated storybooks here.


Maharani Aulia and BE Priyanti, Indonesia

Writers, translators and storytellers, Maharani Aulia and BE Priyanti are translating stories to Basa Jawa (Javanese). This duo who are dear friends, want to preserve Javanese culture and enrich children with stories in their mother tongue. Maharani speaks in her mother tongue Basa Jawa actively at home with her family but she feels that not many people in her country speak their language properly. Read the translated storybooks here.


Nguyen Dac Thai Hang, Vietnam

A teacher and translator, Nguyen realised that there is a lack of resources in Vietnamese. As part of the Freedom to Read campaign, Ngyun is translating storybooks to Vietnamese. Read the translated storybooks here.


Priya Bhakthan, United States

A homemaker from the US, Priya Bhakthan is translating stories into Sanskrit, which she considers to be here the mother of all Indian languages. Priya has been learning Sanskrit for five years now and writes small essays and stories in the language. Read the translated storybooks here.