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

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This position has now been filled.

Pratham Books is a not-for-profit children's book publisher that was set up in 2004 to publish good quality, affordable books in many Indian languages. Our mission is to see ‘a book in every child’s hand’ and we have spread the joy of reading to millions of children in India.

In 13 years, we have published over 3,000 books and distributed over 14 million copies of our storybooks and 16 million story cards. Last year, Pratham Books' increased its footprint by going digital. As an industry leader, we were one of the first publishers in the country to open license our content. All this content is now available on StoryWeaver, our digital platform that hosts stories in 60 languages. The stories can be read, translated, versioned or downloaded for free.

We are looking for an Art Director

Today, Pratham Books creates books suited to both print and digital mediums in multiple languages. We are looking for an Art Director to help us create visually appealing picture books with a strong understanding of how each of these mediums work.

As an Art Director, you will be responsible for the design and production of books created for both print and digital. As most of our titles are migrated to StoryWeaver, we are looking for someone who is tech-savvy and eager to find ways of minimising loss between print and digital book design. This will require you to work closely with our editorial team and external content creators we collaborate with (illustrators, consultant art directors). The candidate needs to have excellent graphic design skills and experience in print production.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage a team of graphic designers to ensure that the book design is completed within agreed timelines
• Work with freelance illustrators and consultant art directors to create visually-appealing books keeping in mind print and digital requirements
• Find innovative ways of reducing losses when a book is adapted from print to digital, or vice versa
• Ensure highest quality of print books
• Work closely with the editorial team to create stories with rich, diverse and nuanced visual narratives
• Bring in expertise of typography, keeping in mind multilingual content

Required skills

• 6-8 years of experience in Graphic Design
• Strong understanding of print production
• Strong communication skills
• Expertise in Photoshop, InDesign
• Ability to multi-task
• Be a team player

Nice to have but not mandatory:

• An interest in illustration and book publishing
• Knowledge of children’s books

Location: The position is based out of Bangalore

Salary: Will commensurate with experience. We are looking for a passionate individual who wants to be part of a team that is creating a new model in multilingual publishing to address the scarcity of books for children in need.

Write to us: Email your resume with Art Director in the subject line to careers(at)prathambooks(dot)org

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Pratham Books is a not-for-profit children's book publisher that was set up in 2004 to publish good quality, affordable books in many Indian languages. Our mission is to see ‘a book in every child’s hand’ and we have spread the joy of reading to millions of children in India. In 13 years, we have published over 3000 books and distributed over 14 million copies of our storybooks and 16 million story cards.

Last year, Pratham Books' increased its footprint by going digital. As an industry leader, we were one of the first publishers in the country to open license our content. All this content is now available on StoryWeaver, which is a digital platform that hosts stories in languages from India and beyond, so that every child can have an endless stream of stories in her mother tongue to read and enjoy. The stories can be read, translated, versioned or downloaded for free. All stories on the platform are openly licensed.

Donate-a-book, is a unique crowd-funding platform for children’s books. The platform helps to bridge the gap between individuals who want to help children read and those organizations, schools and individuals who need books for children.

At Pratham Books, we are shaping a new, innovative approach to multilingual publishing because we believe that every child needs good books to read in a language of their choice.

Pratham Books is looking for a junior digital marketing executive to promote its current suite of digital platforms. The digital marketing executive will work closely with all the organisation’s verticals setting and achieving specific goals in communication, brand building and conversion.  

The ideal candidate will. self-starter, natural organiser and excellent team player.

Responsibilities

• Creating & implementing online and offline campaigns alongside our annual editorial/event calendar.

• Support in execution of marketing projects and campaigns, including ideation, creation of collaterals, distribution of collaterals in various media.

• Create and share content on Social Media channels with our online community in new and exciting formats

• Internal and external communication in the form of digital newsletters

• Drive user engagement on to necessary digital platforms using social media tools, online partnerships and digital marketing.

• Create and manage stakeholder databases.

Skills

• Excellent written and oral communication skills.

• Strong skills in online marketing, branding, social media marketing and copywriting.

Experience

At least 1-2 years’ experience in either publishing/advertising/media/edtech/events.

Qualifications Bachelor’s degree. Any additional certification in digital marketing will be a bonus.

Salary: Will be commensurate with experience. We are looking for a passionate individual who wants to be part of a team that is creating a new model in multilingual publishing to address the scarcity of books for children in need.

Be the first to comment.

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