The Outreach team recently made a big leap towards reaching children in West Bengal and Odisha  through two workshops conducted in Kolkata and Bhubaneshwar.

First stop: Kolkata.

We prepped for the workshop, famous Kusum rolls in hand and Kolkata in turn rewarded us with a fantastic turnout. Around 60 participants joined us from 12+ organizations working with children across the education and social sector. People had traveled from Asansol, Purulia, Bardhaman,Chandipur and even Jamshedpur for the workshop! We were amazed by the level of engagement everyone brought to the table throughout the all-day session. One such organization which attended in large numbers was Vikramshila Education Resource Society which works on a range of projects from early childhood education to capacity building from Ladakh in the North to Andaman in the South. One of their team-members raised the point that in West Bengal, if you travel 20km in any direction, the dialect and vocabulary changes. This slipperiness of the language can make teaching and reading a real challenge.

“What happens when the vocabulary of the teacher is not understood by the students and vice versa though both are speaking slight variations of the same language? What happens when students don’t relate to the texts they are reading?”

These very pertinent questions were echoed by many of the organizations in attendance. Fortunately we also had with us an example of a possible solution in the form of two gentlemen from Suchana. Suchana is a 10 year old community group, which works in Birbhum district of West Bengal towards the education of pre-school to class 10 children from Santal and Kora adivasi communities. Their teacher-translators have used the ‘Translate’ functionality of StoryWeaver to great effect to develop supplementary reading materials in Kora and Santali. Currently, 27 Kora books and 19 Santali books, both in Bengali script are on StoryWeaver; all this made possible by the Creative Commons license we follow.

The ensuing discussion was another aspect of our workshops: to bring people doing such good work in different ways into the same space so that they can begin to talk to each other and find areas of synergy.

We jumped into speaking about how Pratham Books came into being and how StoryWeaver was designed to spread the power of stories to all children, particularly those with limited means to access quality books. We delved into our repository of free content from flashcards and spotting books for early readers to our STEM and Life-Skills based books. The books can be used in a variety of ways: getting children to relate things in their science class to real life, using illustrations as speaking or writing prompts, and so on.

We had with us storytellers, teachers, librarians, program managers and content heads. They all put their heads together to visualize how to adapt the LSRW (Listening - Speaking - Reading - Writing) framework and content on StoryWeaver to their programs. Kolkata being the city of adda, we got into a debate of course about what kind of content we can and cannot show our children.

After a demo of how to translate and create your own stories on the platform, the participants got to work. We ended with different groups showcasing stories they had created on the platform during their work-time and we bid adieu with a group picture.

On to Bhubaneshwar we went!

We were greeted by the green, clean city with wide roads and took advantage of the day to plan for the workshop and also to fill our stomachs with ‘dalma’!  The next morning at the workshop people began pouring in from diverse organizations like Patang and Nilachal Seva Pratisthan who work in rural areas on programs including literacy for children and employable skill-development training for young adults. A number of organizations working with tribal children and reading and literacy programs were also in attendance such as SELCO, American India Foundation and Bakul Foundation. All of us were gathered in the room with one mission - how do we get children of Odisha access to more books to read in languages they love and understand.

The main challenge that came up during discussion was once again finding adequate content and stories that represented experiences children could actually relate to, in languages that they felt comfortable with. This was where we introduced the audience to our Adi Kahani series- a set of 10 books based on the culture of tribal communities in Odisha, with stories developed and illustrated by local writers and illustrators and published in local tribal languages.

Participants curated and presented lists of stories based on themes they wanted to teach like using ‘Cube Cat Cone Cat’ to teach shapes and dimensions in Math. Some interesting directions were explored during the course of the workshop: Gram Tarang which is involved in skill training and also runs Tarang Vaani, an IVR radio was interested in recording some of our stories and airing them on radio to reach a wider audience! A team member from Sikshasandhan immediately expressed interest in collaborating to make this happen.

The most lively time came during an ice breaker post lunch: we had to learn how to make paper planes out of the resource challenges we’d previously penned down, fly them across the room and pick up a different plane to see if there was any overlap in challenges faced. After all the plane throwing and giggling was over, we settled down into work-time where participants aired the sentiment of common resource challenge and shared the stories they’d translated into Odia and some new creations as well.

With a last hurrah and a group picture, we said goodbye to Bhubaneshwar. It had been a long, productive week and we were ready to go home and catch some well-deserved rest.

Be the first to comment.

---

Yesterday evening, StoryWeaver achieved a new milestone by adding the one hundredth language to the platform! The team had been keeping an eye on the language counter on the StoryWeaver homepage for the last couple of days as it teetered precariously on 99.

When we launched StoryWeaver two years ago with 800 stories in 24 languages, we really couldn't predict the tremendous reception the platform has had, not just in India but around the world. Today, with over 5000 stories in 100 languages, StoryWeaver is truly a global repository of multilingual stories. And the thing that makes us happiest is that over 40% of the new languages added to the platform have been at the request of YOU, our amazing community!

Once we shared the happy news on Social Media, congratulatory messages started coming in! Here are some of them:

N.Chokkan, Translator and Reviewer

"Thrilled to hear about StoryWeaver hitting the magic 100 (in terms of number of languages). This is a huge milestone in their journey to make every story available to every child in the world. Very happy to be part of this great project in a small way, and looking forward to 100s of more languages and 1000s of new stories, more smiles!"

Vibha Lohani, Writer, Translator and Storyteller

"A HUNDRED LANGUAGES! Wow ... This is remarkable. I came across StoryWeaver a little over a year back and fell in love with the platform as a mother as well as a writer and storyteller. Over the last year, I witnessed the team give a wider reach to the beautiful stories written by eminent authors and community writers by including various languages into the platform. With so many languages dying due to ignorance and neglect, touching the 100 languages milestone is an achievement worthy of applaud. Keep up the good work StoryWeaver!"

Tanvi Bambolkar, Writer and Translator

""It is a huge milestone for a platform that is so inclusive and always ready to accept and adopt the new. StoryWeaver is taking tales from various languages to kids speaking and reading only one language. I am sure it is also helping the kids to learn new languages and new cultures. Like one of my students learnt the Tamil word 'Kottavi' when his mother tongue is Marathi. This will only encourage them to learn new words and get in touch with newer world. Hundred languages, hundred cultures!"

Madhubala Joshi, Writer, Translator and Reviewer

"This is exhilirating, great news! May our clan of languages and readers, translators,illustrators, editors grow! May every child, everywhere have access to books, fun and joy and eventually knowledge."

Sanghamitra Ghosh, Writer, Translator and Reviewer

"No one can ever forget the magic of stories, fables and fairy tales that we hear and read as children. Working for Story Weaver put me back in touch with that wonderfully whimsical world. Nothing makes me happier than knowing that now so many more kids can be a part of this world of wild imagination and possibilities. Happy 100 StoryWeaver."

A BIG thank you from the bottom of our heart to each and everyone of you who has been with us each step of the way, and believes just as passionately as we do in the Pratham Books mission of 'A Book in Every Child's Hand.'

comments (2)

---

Over the last couple of years, our team at Pratham Books has been focussing on creating simple and engaging picture books that explore STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) concepts. There is a dearth of interesting information books for early readers in India - especially across Indian languages – and we have actively been trying to bridge that gap. Within two years, we have created around 300 multilingual STEM books (available for free on www.storyweaver.org.in), and also set up STEM libraries around the country.

Having had such a strong focus on STEM, we were delighted to be invited by The Asia Foundation to participate in their e-book hackathon in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which was aimed at creating openly-licensed STEM books in their local language. Like in India, there are very few children’s books in Cambodia that explore STEM topics imaginatively, and the hackathon was a step towards reducing that gap. Over two days (Aug 19-20, 2017), several local writers, illustrators and designers collaborated to make picture books that were centred around STEM topics. The ‘Let’s Read E-book Hackathon’ was also an attempt at identifying young professionals in the publishing sector, and nurturing their skills.

 

My role, as an editor from Pratham Books, was to offer editorial guidance over the 2-day event. I got the opportunity to discuss some of the key observations that we had made at Pratham Books while creating STEM-based picture books. In essence: what are the crucial things to bear in mind while creating STEM books for early readers, and what works. Here's what Melody Zavala (Director, Books for Asia) said about the hackathon, "The Asia Foundation uses 'e-book hackathons' to drastically reduce the time and resources needed to produce beautiful, illustrated children’s books on topics missing from the commercial market. We were thrilled to draw on Pratham Books’ experience with STEM titles. In Cambodia, only 3 percent of university students choose to study STEM subjects, according to the Ministry of Education, Youth & Sport. We hope this can be changed by stimulating interest at a young age through fun storybooks."

It was fascinating to watch writers and illustrators work so closely, constanly exchanging ideas and refining the narrative as they progressed. We watched as illustrators brought characters to life, developed storyboards along with their writers, and sketched eye-catching book covers. While the foundations of the book were being laid out, many fundamental questions were tossed around, which eventually helped each story evolve: Is the the title too revealing? Did the perspective of each illustration make sense? Is the illustration merely reflecting the text, or is there scope for additional detail?

 

Interacting with an enthusiastic group of writers, editors, illustrators and designers gave me plenty of time to reflect on the entire book-creation process, and I returned home feeling rather inspired and rejuvenated. Helping create simple and fun STEM books at Pratham Books has been both challenging and full of discovery, so it was gratifying to be able to share those experiences with others who are also trying to make reading more inclusive. It was also heartening to see some of the Pratham Books titles being distributed at the event and that too, in their local language! The Asia Foundation team had translated several of our titles into Khmer. As a multilingual publisher, nothing gives us more joy!

 

The 8 local-language books that were created during the 2-day Hackathon will soon be available for free on Let’s Read! - a digital platform that empowers underserved communities in Asia to build digital libraries in their own languages.
You can read more about the STEM hackathon here.

This post was written by Yamini, a Consultant Editor at Pratham Books who represented Pratham Books at the 'Let's Read! E-book Hackathon' in Cambodia.

Be the first to comment.

---