Ras Abebe Aregay Library is a library based in Debre Birhan, Ethiopia. They host storybook writing workshops for children. In the past, they have collaborated with the African Storybook Initiative to host workshops and get more storybooks written and translated. They distribute digital storybooks to agencies and regional bureaus of education and are able to reach children in Ethiopia through their network of schools, parents and NGOs across the country.  

In this email interview, Mezemir Girma, General Manager of Ras Abebe Aregay Library tells us about his #FreedomToRead experience, and the process of creating a digital library of 40 storybooks in Amharic.

Do tell us about the Ras Abebe Aregay Library, its vision, and the communities that you engage with.

Ras Abebe Aregay Library envisions creating a generation of readers in Ethiopia. We engage with the community in Debre Birhan town, Amhara National Regional State through our library. Our involvement in making learning materials and knowledge accessible online to the wider Ethiopian community results in our library serving more people in Ethiopia. 

What are the long-term effects of a lack of easy access to resources in mother tongue languages for the communities that you work with?

In Ethiopia, there is a shortage of storybooks, as well as textbooks. The lack of easy access to resources in mother tongue languages for Ethiopian students perpetuates the vicious circle of illiteracy and poverty.

How did you come across StoryWeaver and the Freedom to Read campaign? What prompted you to participate in the campaign?

Our library took part in an African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) meeting in Accra in October 2019. At that event, we spoke to the participants about the African Storybook Initiative. A representative from Uganda asked if that was like StoryWeaver. That was the first time we heard about StoryWeaver. Later, we visited the StoryWeaver website and followed them on social media. Then, on Twitter we learned about the Freedom to Read campaign. We applied to translate storybooks to Amharic. After the selection process, our library was among the six organizations chosen globally to take part in the translation project.

What are the benefits of creating a local digital library of joyful storybooks in Amharic?

As we are working on reading and literacy, we understand how storybooks are helpful to children in our communities. When one gets the opportunity to translate quality picture storybooks into one’s mother tongue, one should not miss the opportunity. As we wish to help this generation get better opportunities than ours, we seized this opportunity and took StoryWeaver‘s online training via Skype.

Local digital storybooks in Amharic are helpful as there is a shortage of storybooks in the country. As a lecturer in English Literature at one of the public universities in Ethiopia, I was not aware of storybooks until 2014 when an American Peace Corps Volunteer, Benjamin Rearick, introduced me to the African Storybook Initiative (ASb) and their wonderful translation system. By the way, I felt really happy when I found the storybooks I translated for ASb on the StoryWeaver website. Therefore, in a country where children have little access to storybooks, the role that the translation project may have is beyond words.

Tell us a bit about your process of translation. Were there any challenges you faced while translating to Amharic?

The translation process was a bit challenging. At first, our plan was to engage library readers and volunteers in the activity. However, they found it hard to get time to involve themselves in the translation project. Therefore, being the manager of the library, it was up to me to work on the translation. The translation was a bit difficult because I was not familiar with the website. It took me a while to get used to it. The online training helped me. The number of holidays that Ethiopia celebrated in the last few weeks kept me away from the university where I could get internet connection. As much as possible I used the time I had to translate.  After I went half way, I learned that I could use Google Translate. Earlier I didn’t rely on google’s Amharic translation system as I heard people say it is inaccurate. Now I am using it even if their Amharic translation requires more editing work.

How do you hope to reach more children through your books in Amharic?

Once the translation is over, distribution is another challenge. As I know from experience, the community lacks access to the internet. At our library, we will display the storybooks to children using our projector and laptop. We will also download and disseminate in nearby schools. Other areas of the country could be reached with social media and regional education bureaus.

The logo of our library was designed by our IT volunteer Mr Tesfamicael Hailu and we would love to thank him as he filled that gap and helped our library appear on the storybooks we translate!

Thank you everyone at StoryWeaver for the opportunity you gave us!  

Mezemir Girma from Ras Abebe Aregay Library, Ethiopia

Mezemir Girma conducts reads a storybook in Amharic with children in Ethiopia

Storybooks translated by Ras Abebe Aregay Library into Amharic on StoryWeaver

Thank you, Ras Abebe Aregay Library, for giving children the #FreedomToRead in Amharic!

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You can read all the storybooks translated by Ras Abebe Aregay Library here.

Learn more about the organisation and their work here.

Do join the conversation by leaving your thoughts in the comments section below. You can also reach out to us through our social media channels: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

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Whether you are an educator looking for distance learning solutions, or a parent looking for ways of keeping your little ones engaged, or someone who cares about children having uninterrupted access to reading resources even during school closures due to the COVID-19 outbreak - StoryWeaver is here to support you.

Illustration by Ekta Bharti, for I Love Me, written by Menaka Raman and published by Pratham Books.

We have more than 19,000 storybooks in 230 languages, available on our platform www.storyweaver.org.in which you can read online, on your phone, download or print PDFs, all for free. Here are some of the other ways that you can use StoryWeaver:

--> The Reading Programme is an easy-to-use, curated collection of books, themes and activities, tailored to suit the learning needs of children from Grades 1 to 8. Sign up for free and help children fall in love with books and  reading!  http://bit.ly/33jYdMl

--> The STEM Reading Lists have a collection of storybooks that spark curiosity and interest in children to explore concepts related to science, math and technology: http://bit.ly/3aR5RR9

--> The Readalongs are audio-visual storybooks that early readers can listen to as they learn to read. These books have subtitles that mirror the audio narration of the story, which help children build language acquisition skills: http://bit.ly/3aS5Nk2

--> StoryWeaver’s English and Hindi YouTube channels have delightful, artfully narrated video stories to engage children and nurture their thinking and imagination.

Explore StoryWeaver’s local language digital libraries that are available in Amharic, Assamese, Bahasa Indonesia, Bangla (Bangladesh), BasaJawa , Bengali, Chinyanja, Farsi, French, Gondi, Gujarati, Hindi, Igbo, Kannada, Khmer, Kiswahili, Kolami, Konkani, Korku, Luganda, Macedonian, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan, Urdu, Vietnamese and Yoruba, to name a few.

If you are looking for more distance learning solutions, here is a comprehensive list shared by UNESCO.

Thanks to the power of open licensing, technology, and our network of wonderful authors, illustrators, translators and partners, we can give children around the world free access to joyful reading material, even during school closures.

Keep calm, stay safe and #ReadAtHomeWithStoryWeaver.

P.S. Do share your ‘read at home’ moments with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using #ReadAtHomeWithStoryWeaver, and inspire our community!

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We are delighted to share that StoryWeaver has been selected by the Qatar Foundation’s flagship education initiative, WISE, as a finalist for the 2020 WISE Awards. Each year, the WISE Awards recognize and promote innovative and impactful projects from around the world that are addressing today’s most pressing global educational challengEs.

The 15 WISE Awards finalists come from 10 countries and were selected from a pool of 625 submissions evaluated according to strict criteria. Selected projects needed to be established, innovative educational projects that have already demonstrated a transformative impact on individuals, communities, and society in their context. They also needed to be financially stable, have a clear development plan, and be scalable and replicable.

StoryWeaver is working towards addressing the global book gap by providing open and free access to quality storybooks in multiple languages to promote reading acquisition among children. At the platform’s core, is a repository of high-quality, openly licensed, multilingual storybooks from Pratham Books and other reputed publishers. While the platform is digital, the books are available in multiple formats to overcome the issue of digital access and can be read online, offline, or downloaded and printed. StoryWeaver has also embedded simple tools on the platform that allow users to further translate and version the books for localized requirements.

The StoryWeaver Model: Working towards bridging the book gap

This has led to a massive increase of over 2200% in the availability of local language books. StoryWeaver was launched in 2015 with 800 storybooks in 24 languages. Today it provides access to more than 20,000 books in 238 languages, to readers from all around the world.

Supporting and scaling the creation of books for children in diverse languages  (58% of the languages featured on the platform are indigenous)

Providing access to diverse and inclusive storybooks for children

Suzanne Singh, Chairperson of Pratham Books, says: "StoryWeaver's vision is to massively scale the creation and distribution of reading resources for children in mother tongue languages. Our endeavor is to address the global scarcity of books for children and arm every child with the power of knowledge and opportunity. By providing access to thousands of storybooks, the platform has enabled educators to make classrooms more engaging, libraries more diverse and most importantly, make learning fun for children. With StoryWeaver, we have opened up a new pathway to nurture a generation of readers.”

StoryWeaver has seen a huge global uptick in usage as a result of children being at home due to forced school closures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As education systems are adapting to remote learning as a solution during this time, StoryWeaver is providing open access to a large repository of quality content that is being used widely. 

Empowering educators with curated, high-quality open access resources

Stavros N. Yiannouka, CEO of WISE, says: “Our world is experiencing a crisis that is affecting all facets of our lives. Education is no exception, and indeed the need for innovation is all the more urgent because of the systemic shortcomings that the crisis has exposed. In this context, the work celebrated by the WISE Awards is critically important. Each of the 2020 WISE Awards finalists has built an effective, tested solution to a global educational challenge. Whether ensuring access to fundamental early childhood education or imparting valuable entrepreneurship and financial literacy skills, each project is already transforming lives, and provides an inspirational model for others to emulate. As we look forward to recognising this year’s WISE Awards winners it is imperative that policymakers and civil society leaders around the world seriously address the need to bring some of these innovations to scale.”

With 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. This scale would not have been possible without the power of collaboration: Publishers who have open-licensed their content at scale. Linguists and translators who have created and translated content into new languages. Educators in every nook and corner of the world who have welcomed StoryWeaver into their classrooms and the hearts of their students. 

We are grateful to our wonderful network for helping us share the joy of reading in hundreds of languages, and to WISE for this recognition.

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Learn more about the 2020 WISE Awards and other finalists at http://www.wise-qatar.org/wise-awards

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below! You can also reach out to us through our social media channels: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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