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.

                                            

(Image by Nina Sabnani, from 'Counting on Moru' by Rukmini Banerji.)

As the stories on StoryWeaver are travelling further, we need more hands on board! Currently, we're looking for a full-time, Editorial Assistant to join our Digital Team in Bengaluru.

Job description

StoryWeaver is looking for an editorial assistant. The position involves, working with the editorial team, to adapt books for the digital platform, maintain quality on the platform and perform administrative and editorial tasks.

Required Skill-set

• Good communication skills in English

• Work with the StoryWeaver team to maintain quality on the platform

• Ability to tag stories and images before uploading on StoryWeaver

• Coordinate with the administrative team for documentation, records and payments

• Ability to maintain and document day-to- day editorial assignments

• Ability to multitask, meet tight deadlines and be team player

Desirable

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

• Tech savvy with a sharp eye and love for languages

Experience

• 1-2 years work experience would be good, but freshers may also apply.

Location

This is a full time position in our Bengaluru office.

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

We look forward to hearing from you!

 

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We are delighted to share that Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver has been selected as a finalist for the WISE Awards 2018.

StoryWeaver, an initiative of Pratham Books, is among 12 finalists chosen by the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) for their innovative and impactful approaches to today’s most urgent education challenges

Each year, the WISE Awards recognize and promote innovative projects from around the world that are addressing global educational challenges.

StoryWeaver is an innovative digital platform which harnesses the power of technology, open licensing and collaboration to address the global scarcity of books for children in mother tongue languages. StoryWeaver also allows for content to be translated and versioned for localized needs. This responsive platform has published over 7500 story books available in 109 languages, making knowledge accessible to children and educators beyond global access barriers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suzanne Singh, Chairperson of Pratham Books, said StoryWeaver’svision 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”.

Stavros N. Yiannouka, CEO of WISE, said: “We congratulate StoryWeaver for making it to the finalist stage. Each of the 2018 WISE Awards finalists has constructed an effective, tested solution to a global educational challenge. Whether it’s ensuring fundamental education for refugees or creating the next generation of empathetic and conscious leaders, each project is already transforming lives, and provides an inspirational model for others to adopt. This is vital to our mission at WISE, which centers around collaboration”.

The 12 projects come from eleven countries and were shortlisted for their innovative solutions to education challenges and their positive social impact. The awards finalists were picked from a pool of 413 projects, and evaluated according to strict criteria. They must be successful, innovative education projects that have already demonstrated a transformative impact on individuals, communities, and society. They must be financially stable, have a clear development plan and be scalable and replicable.

For further information, visit http://www.wise-qatar.org/wise- awards. 

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About the WISE Awards: 

Each year, the WISE Awards recognize and promote six successful innovative projects that are addressing global educational challenges. Since 2009, WISE has received more than 3,200 applications from over 150 countries. Up until now, 54 projects have won the WISE Awards, from a wide variety of sectors and locations for their innovative character, their positive contribution and their potential for scalability and adaptability. These projects represent a growing resource of expertise and sound educational practice. Year by year, WISE is building a community of educational innovators which offers a fertile environment for groundbreaking collaborations. Today the WISE Awards network comprises pioneering projects that are helping bring real change to societies and communities.

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Imagine if the language you speak to your friends, think your funniest thoughts in and dream your bravest dreams in, is hardly known in your own country, and might even reach an early death in two decades. To ward off this isolation acutely felt by Kora and Santali, tribal languages spoken in communities across West Bengal and Odisha, Suchana has been working towards their preservation with quiet determination fuelled by their love for literacy and a zeal for preserving adivasi languages.

Suchana, a 10 year old community group, works in Birbhum, W. Bengal towards the education of pre-school to class 10 children from Santal and Kora adivasi communities. Suchana knows that when education knocks at your door, it must come in a language that you understand. Entering a school room can be daunting for a child from an adivasi background as she or he is expected to know a state-language that they or their family have never learnt, or have been denied access to. Our education system is missing out on a huge cultural opportunity here by not being inclusive of more languages, and thus not reaching out to children who need education the most. This tragedy of education not benefitting children who are trying to break centuries-old shackles of being looked down upon as an adivasi is profound.

This is where Suchana steps in to ensure ‘Right to Education’. They have made it their mission to make sure that Kora and Santali are looked upon as legitimate, literacy-inducing languages, and that ‘adivasi school going kids’ can just be school going kids. They aim to sustain cultural identities and promote literacy among the tribal and underprivileged communities through their education programs. As far as they know, they are the first organization to have created children’s books, or in fact any books at all, in Kora.

One of their key educational initiatives, Mobile Library, was started in 2011 with children of 6 villages. Today, the library travels in two vehicles, covers 25 villages and has 1135 members. It consists of books that are written in multiple languages, especially in the tribal languages (Kora and Santali) that children can relate to and learn in. Children who have never held story books in their hands or understood their importance now have access to joyful reading material that’s related to their education and growth, along with creativity and imagination.

   

Kirsty Milward, Founder of Suchana, says, “In Santali and Kora – and other adivasi languages – there is no children’s literature at all. This is at least partly because until the current generation, most adivasi children did not go to school. Among the (still quite young) mothers of Suchana’s current adivasi students, for example, 80% never went to school at all. So where was the need for children’s books in those languages?”

We are proud of our association with Suchana. The organisation’s teacher-translators have been able to develop supplementary reading materials in Kora and Santali at a much faster and prominent way through StoryWeaver. Currently, 27 Kora books and 19 Santali, both in Bengali script are on StoryWeaver. Suchana has printed 10,000 copies of these books for their mobile library and are exploring loading e-books onto SD cards to disseminate stories on low cost mobile phones.

It’s a huge step for languages that were near obscurity and oblivion, to be suddenly sailing the digital waves and ready to be accessed by the whole world in the form of beautiful stories. Read these stories in Bengali script in the tribal languages of Kora and Santali.

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