StoryWeaver Community Spotlight: Professor Lea Shaver explains Book Hunger and the steps we can take to mitigate this crisis

Posted by Pallavi Kamath on September 01, 2020

This is the 1st post in a two-part series featuring the work of Prof. Lea Shaver, the world's leading expert on book hunger and the right to read. She is tenured at Indiana University's Robert H. McKinney School of Law, where she teaches copyright law and human rights law. Her research on intellectual property and distributive justice has shaped international law at the United Nations. She is a long-time advocate of StoryWeaver and its open-licensing philosophy.

Purvi Shah, Director -  StoryWeaver says: “We were introduced to Lea’s work way back in 2014, through a research paper she had authored. The paper's focus was on copyright, how it promotes social inequality and can be a barrier to access. We reached out to her and walked her through Pratham Books’ open license philosophy, and how it helps address issues of access and gives agency to stakeholders to create content they need and can use. This led to our story being extensively referenced in her latest book Ending Book Hunger. A big thank you to Lea for raising awareness about and sharing solutions to these challenges of access and literacy.”

Read this piece by Professor Shaver, to understand the pressing issue of ‘book hunger’ and the steps we can take to mitigate this crisis.

Worldwide, one billion children have virtually no reading material. Over the long term, book hunger is almost as dangerous as the regular kind. 

Early and consistent access to reading material is essential to literacy skills. And fluent literacy is key to academic success and escape from poverty.

An extensive body of research demonstrates that a book-rich environment is critical to a child’s educational achievement and future income. The “book effect” has been demonstrated in countries both rich and poor, communist and capitalist, and across diverse cultures. Sociologists Mariah Evans, Jonathan Kelley, and Joanna Sikora reviewed studies on the relationship between books and life outcomes from forty-two countries. They found that even the smallest of home book collections benefit children, and these benefits increase with the size of the collection. Growing up in a home with at least two hundred books promotes a child’s future success more powerfully than having parents with college degrees. This rigorous body of research proves what those of us who grew up with books already know.

Children who read regularly for pleasure become fluent readers, take joy in learning, and perform well in school.

Books at home matter so much, because that's where children are most of the time.

Teachers all over the world are scrambling to figure out how to continue to support literacy while schools are closed. The most important step is to get books to every child. Simply providing books makes a big difference.

The viral pandemic has created a book crisis. And that should concern us greatly, because access to books is the number one determinant of educational achievement and future income.

So, how do we get books to students... fast... in both digital and paper formats?

There are several solutions:

  • DIGITAL: Smartphones connect 4.7 billion people to the Internet. Virtual libraries can put a bookshelf in every pocket.
  • LICENSING: Speeding up permissions helped libraries and schools better serve readers with blindness and other print disabilities.
  • FAIR USE: Libraries and book charities can invoke existing legal flexibility to translate children's books into underserved languages.
  • LEGAL REFORM: Lawmakers can legalize translations into disadvantaged languages, without impacting publishing income.
  • OPEN BOOKS: Creative Commons licenses helped one nonprofit (Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver) go from producing a few dozen new books each year, to producing thousands.
  • VOLUNTEERS: One in ten Icelanders will publish a book. It's not because they hope to get rich.
  • SCALING UP: We can end childhood book hunger by 2030, but only through a strategy of mass translation, free eBooks, and cheap copies.

Book hunger is a solvable problem. If this issue matters to you, I'm excited to present 'Ending Book Hunger'. Discover innovative non-profit strategies to bring books within reach of every child, and what you can do to help. Visit: ‘Ending Book Hunger’ to learn more.

Illustration by Shrujana Shridhar, for बेटियाँ भी चाहें आज़ादी written by Kamla Bhasin, published by Pratham Books

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This Children’s Day, StoryWeaver and Pratham Education Foundation renew their commitment to providing free storybooks to children

Posted by Julia M on February 17, 2022

A year ago, on Children’s Day 2020, StoryWeaver and Pratham Education Foundation announced a collaboration to develop and grow a repository of free, openly licensed reading resources for young children. As the first step, 50 storybooks from Pratham Education Foundation were launched on the StoryWeaver platform.

 

Kahaniyaan hi Kahaniyaan -  A treasure trove of storybooks

To mark the first anniversary of this collaboration, we are delighted to share the progress that has been made since then, in creating, translating, and curating storybooks across many languages. This Children’s Day, over one thousand storybooks will be made available for public access across two platforms – StoryWeaver and Pratham Education Foundation’s Pratham Open School.

Storybooks in ten Indian languages and English

The Pratham-StoryWeaver collaboration now has uploaded more than 600 storybooks in Assamese, Bangla, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Telugu, and Urdu. This allows for open, and easy access to simple, interesting and fun storybooks.

Having these storybooks under the CC BY 4.0 license on StoryWeaver makes them available to a larger audience worldwide, and the books are free to read, download and use. At the same time, these books will give the StoryWeaver community new stories to translate, giving children around the world access to more books in their own languages.

In addition to the collection of new storybooks on StoryWeaver, a rich variety of additional storybooks are also available on the Pratham Open School website. You can “read”, “listen” and use “highlighted” storybooks. What makes these packs special is that they are context-specific libraries with storybooks created by unique individuals from various backgrounds focusing on the local community and capturing the flavour of the region they represent. The packs include books from Himachal, Tripura, Assam, Bihar and Bengal with stories in the regional languages.

 

Campaign for celebration

Starting November 14, for a week, Pratham Education Foundation teams in 20 states will work with local volunteers, mothers, and community members to share one storybook a day through the ‘Kahaniyaan hi Kahaniyaan’ campaign and do a variety of activities like role-playing, drawing, and storytelling among others.

This partnership is a small step towards the goal of building a vast treasure trove of thousands of storybooks that will be freely available for children in their mother tongues.

Come join us on an exciting journey for the week of ‘Kahaniyaan hi Kahaniyaan’!

Follow us on our social media for campaign updates!

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Explore all the storybooks available for free on StoryWeaver here:  https://bit.ly/3wHyGf6

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StoryWeaver needs an Editorial Assistant!

Posted by Remya Padmadas on May 03, 2016

As the stories on StoryWeaver are travelling further, we need more hands on board! 

StoryWeaver is a digital repository of openly-licensed, multilingual children's stories. A Pratham Books' initiative, StoryWeaver allows its users to read, create and translate stories into many, many Indian and international languages in the hope that children across the world can read quality stories in languages of their choice. 

Currently, we're looking for a full-time, Editorial Assistant to join our Digital Team in Bangalore. 

As an Editorial Assistant at StoryWeaver, this is what will keep you busy:

  • Working with a designer to adapt our legacy content (Pratham Books' print books) for StoryWeaver

  • Co-ordinating with authors, illustrators, translators, reviewers and proofreaders

  • Reviewing and editing manuscripts

  • Co-ordinating with the administrative team for documentation, records and payments (contracts, work orders, etc)

  • Identifying and working with other content creators who may want their stories on StoryWeaver

  • Nurturing StoryWeaver's user community

  • Support campaigns aimed at improving content on StoryWeaver

  • Finding creative ways for stories on StoryWeaver to travel wide and far

  • Uploading books on StoryWeaver which involves tagging stories and images in a way that makes it accessible to users

Preferred Requirements

  • Degree in Literature/Journalism/Mass Communication/Media /Language 

  • Excellent Communication skills in English, and ability to read and write well in any one Indian language (preferably Kannada or Telugu)

  • 1-2 years of work experience; freshers may also apply

  • Ability to multi-task and coordinate between different stakeholders

  • Be a good team player

  • Tech-savvy

  • Sharp eyes to check copy

  • Love for languages 

Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. Please send your resume to [email protected] with 'Editorial Assistant for StoryWeaver' in the subject line of the email.

We look forward to hearing from you!

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