Khyati Datt from our Partnerships Team, reports on how Pratham Education Foundation in Mumbai is using a community-centric approach to drive change in a neighbourhood.  

It’s a bright and early morning at  Pratham Mumbai’s Bharat Nagar Centre. The centre incharge and trainers are gearing up for a long day of visiting nearby communities and interacting with children. We asked them, “What book do you and the children enjoy reading the most?”. After some excited discussions amongst themselves, the trainers happily informed us, “the one with the turtle”. We're still trying to figure out which turtle books it is!

Pratham Education Foundation is one of the country’s  largest non-governmental organizations, working on high-quality, low-cost, replicable interventions to address gaps in the education system. Pratham’s Mumbai chapter started work in 1994 with the aim to create a societal mission for achieving universal pre-primary & primary education in the city. Since inception, Pratham Mumbai has impacted the lives and learning of many children.  In just the year 2017-18, the chapter has managed to reach more than 42,000 children.

Taking the community along. Always.  

One of the organization’s centres in Mumbai is a Community Resource Centre in Bharat Nagar. The centre focuses on providing education support to the children and parents of 15-20 communities in the vicinity and additionally, provide children with access to reading material in the form of a library.

Reena More, Rachna Gurav and Sheetal Jagdhani work in the Bharat Nagar centre and have been working with Pratham for more than 11 years now. They, along with a few other trainers, are responsible for ensuring that all the interventions for the 15-20 communities run smoothly.  The trainers plan each day in the community well in advance, so that all the interventions run in a structured manner, even if they are not there to supervise the children. They believe that it’s very important to meet all the stakeholders in the communities regularly and therefore, visit two communities every day to interact with the parents and the children. These visits help the trainers keep the student and parent engagement alive and active!

 

Source: Children at Pratham Mumbai’s Community Resource Centre in Bharat Nagar.

Making children independent readers

The programmes at the centre are targeted towards children of all ages. Children from Grades 3 to 8 interact with the trainers on a weekly basis for support classes and for access to books to read. The trainers have ensured that the children learn independently and if required, with the support of their peers.  Sheetal shares that focus on reading is a very important objective for the trainers at the centre because “by reading stories or hearing stories, children are exposed to a wide range of words and it helps them to build their vocabulary, comprehension, listening and communication skills.”

The trainers have downloaded stories from StoryWeaver in Hindi, English, Marathi & Urdu and have put them on their laptops as per levels. The children sit in a group, around a laptop and read together. Each group has a leader who takes responsibility for ensuring that all the children in his/her group read and even helps them comprehend the story. The children are encouraged to engage further with the books through assignments and  activities and are also asked to give their feedback and share their opinion about the book they have read. Reena shares that even if the children are unable to come to the centre, they meet at a friend’s house and try and read books together. The trainers shared that two stories the children love reading are Kaakaasaurus and Gul in Space because while one makes them laugh, the other one makes them wonder about the world.

Source:  Children reading in a group at the Bharat Nagar Centre

The trainers interact with the parents of children as young as 3 years old and support them through workshops, so that the parents take responsibility for the learning of their children. Rachna says, “we encourage the parents to borrow books from the library and read books to their children in the mother tongue language.”

They also train the anganwadi workers so that the young children are learning something each day. The trainers are aware of the busy schedule of the parents, which is why they encourage the anganwadi workers to give the children simple, short assignments that the parents can help with.

All the trainers at the Bharat Nagar centre have been engaging with the children and the stakeholders in the community for a long time. Their experience over all these years has shown them that by encouraging children and parents to read, children become more curious and the parents become more involved and engaged in their child’s learning.

We love the parent engagement that Pratham centres actively drive. Here is to many happy hours of reading together!

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The Retell, Remix and Rejoice Contest from Pratham Books is on! This year we changed things around a bit, and gave our community themes to weave some story magic around. You can read more about this here. 

We thought the story weavers who are taking part this year might like some advice from our seasoned editors at Pratham Books on what to keep in mind when writing books for our very youngest readers!  

Manisha Chaudhry, Head of Content, Pratham Books

• When you're writing a Pratham Books Level 1 book, stick to one idea.
• Avoid sub-plots.
• Try to stick  to one line per page
• Be descriptive! Use words that have sensory pleasure in them - soft, hard, thin, cold, hot, shiny etc. 
• Use words that are fun to say-gobble gobble, drip drop, pins and needles etc
• Use the child's eye view , if possible

Rajesh Khar, Senior Editor, Pratham Books

• Writing with some learning objective or a moral is a big No for any children's fiction.
• A story can be woven around an idea but the learning has to be embedded in the story itself in a subtle manner just like an subconscious outcome, not open and blunt.
• The story must not have any biases and prejudices and should also steer clear of the stereotyped characters, settings and nuances.

Rajesh also shared some of his favourite Level 1 and 2 books (click on the name to read them on StoryWeaver!)

• Pehalwaanji learns a slippery lesson
• Smart Sona series
• Shringeri Srinivas series
• The Aloo Maloo Kaloo series 
• Grandpa Fish & the Radio
• The Royal Toothache  

Sandhya Taksale, Senior Editor, Pratham Books

 

Madhuri Purandare's 'Aunt Jui's Baby' perfectly embodies what my colleague Rajesh is saying. The learning is embedded in the story in a subtle manner and the narration is also from the child's point of view.  

Here is Sandhya's pick of level 1 and 2 books! 

• Gulli's Box of Things
• Bhima the Donkey
• I Can Help and the The Growing Up bilingual series books by Mini Srinivasan
• Clean Cat and the other Animals Around Us - bilingual series books by Kanchan Banerjee 

Yamini Vijayan, Commissioning Editor, Pratham Books

Repetition and patterns work very well with early readers. "Will you be my friend?" "Are you my mother?" are examples.. 

It's important  for writers to expose themselves to as many picture books as possible. Reading is important!

Bijal Vachharajani, Editorial Consultant, Pratham Books

• Write and rewrite. Reflect.
• Share your words with other readers and writers
• Read your story out loud for rhythm and pace.
• Ask for feedback. Listen to feedback.
• Edit ruthlessly. And then edit some more. 
• Read many books, and then read some more. Read what you like, read what you don't.
• Become a fierce critic of yourself. 
• Remember when you are writing for children, you need to pull up your socks and give it your best. They will never settle for less. 

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