Written by Kirsty Milward, Founder, Suchana Foundation

Settle down for this long read that comes to our blog from Birbhum, West Bengal.

                                       

Suchana set out in 2005 to try to solve the problem of low learning levels among many adivasi primary school–going children in Birbhum, West Bengal. For part of the solution, we quickly settled on the fact that when Santal and Kora children start school they do not understand much of what they are expected to learn to read, because all teaching, and all learning materials are in Bengali.

But trying to introduce first language / mother tongue methods – or even multilingual methods – in our teaching programme was made hugely challenging by the fact that there were no written materials for children in the languages the children spoke. For Kora, there were no written materials full stop.

The 10 Santali and Kora translators

So we began to make materials. For Santali, this meant getting some guidance from organisations who had already been using Bengali script to write Santali, and then inspiring Santali teachers working in Suchana to tap into their creativity and write. For Kora, this meant generating a discussion among community leaders on how words should be written using the Bengali script; it meant young Kora teachers doing research among elders to re-learn disappearing Kora vocabularies; and it meant getting groups of young people together to write songs, rhymes, stories and a simple tri-lingual word book.

But this creative process took time, and coupled with lengthy printing processes with hideous proofing challenges and equally challenging costs, this meant we could collectively only produce three or four small books a year. By 2014, we had produced 15 books. And meanwhile, the children in the education programmes were growing up. Their young years, in which access to first language materials could be such a critical intervention, were running out.

Then in 2015, in a moment of serendipity, Suchana discovered Storyweaver. With a creative commons platform, a torrent of lovely stories graded into reading levels, and beautiful layouts to use, creating a varied, usable, children’s literature in Santali and Kora, suddenly changed from a daunting task to one within our grasp.

The same young team of fifteen Santali and Kora teachers who had been involved in making books from scratch set to work. Most had acquired some technology skills through Suchana’s other programmes in the intervening years. They shared these skills with those who had not; and themselves learned to use the Suchana platform through a mixture of online tutorials, personalized help from the Storyweaver team, and a fair bit of trial and error.

In their first translation marathon, they translated around 50 stories. Teachers chose freely which stories to translate from a pool of Bengali stories available on the platform, which they could translate from easily. With few options for getting their work formally reviewed and checked, they inserted quality control by creating a peer-review system in which they carefully checked each other’s work before stories were published online.   

We had gone from 15 to 65 in about 3 months.

Concerned about how we would ensure that digital stories would reach the hands of children who had very little access to technology, Suchana arranged to print 20 of these stories. Both print and digital stories were then woven into Suchana’s mobile library programme which reaches about 1500 children. Librarians took laptops to remote mobile library villages and showed Santali and Kora digital stories to library members in read-aloud sessions. Children were then free to take home printed stories available in the library stock, where they could read them again, and read with their families.

Children looking at stories on the computer

For many children with emerging literacy, being offered a chance to read stories in their own languages was like a light switching on. Suddenly, text which usually seemed dense and difficult made sense and fitted together. Now, when they were not sure how a particular letter in a word worked, they could make deductions based on their understanding of the likely word being represented to figure out what the letter was doing. Suddenly, it was possible to have meaning fall into the place of decoded text, and the story rise out.

But even 50 stories – about 25 in each language – can get read quite quickly among a multi-age group with library sessions every week. So in 2018, Suchana joined Storyweaver’s Freedom to Read Campaign and the push to 100 stories in each language. Beyond reaching Santali and Kora stories to children through the mobile library membership, Suchana had just begun to work more consistently with local primary schools and ICDS anganwadis on using mother-tongue methods in early years’ classrooms. Most teachers and anganwadi staff teaching adivasi children do not have the luxury of knowing the languages of the children they are charged to teach, and many are acutely aware of the difficulties this presents. So Suchana’s second translation marathon focused partly on producing bilingual books in Santali-Bengali and Kora-Bengali – with a view to enabling willing teachers to help their Santali and Kora students access stories in their own languages too. Watch this space for more information in a few months on how this initiative goes.

This week we crossed 212 stories: just over 100 in Santali; just over 90 in Kora; and 15 stories Suchana had produced from scratch. This feels like a very different place we have arrived at. Several hundred children are now reading a real variety of books in their own languages – from very simple, to more complex ‘Level 4’ books as they progress in their literacy; and books which can help themselves and their teachers transition from their own languages into Bengali, the language of their schools. They read about animals, people, families, friends, trees, maths concepts, science ideas, joy, sadness, and everything in between, in their own languages. The amazing worlds that children’s literature can open up have finally become theirs.

Congratulations for this huge achievement to the Suchana translation team: Bhabini Baski, Churki Hansda, Komola Murmu, Sova Tudu, Lakshman Hembram, Subhadra Murmu, Narayan Hembram, Shanto Kora, Kumkum Kora, Debika Kora, Kalicharan Kora, Rajesh Kora, Pathik Kora, Nobin Kora, Anjana Kora and Krishna Kora.

We have not finished, but Storyweaver has started something, and we are on the way.

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Written by Shaoni Dasgupta, Assistant Editor at StoryWeaver

 

We are thrilled and proud to reach 20,000 storybooks on the StoryWeaver platform! When StoryWeaver was launched in September 2015 with 800 storybooks in 24 languages, we couldn't have predicted the tremendous reception the platform has received over the last five years - not just in India, but around the world.

Illustration by Sandhya Prabhat, for Today I Am written by Varsha Seshan, published by Pratham Books

We are extremely thankful to our amazing community, for helping us get to where we are today. It is your unwavering faith in our motto, and your help with strengthening our foundation through your stories and translations that has helped us achieve this milestone. Without your support and goodwill, we wouldn't be where we are! We are so excited to do what we do because of you and our brilliant pool of publisher and translator partners. Here's a shoutout to all of you for being amazing! You have joined hands to hold the base of the platform to make it what it is, and we couldn't be more thankful. 

Today, with 20,000 storybooks in 235 languages, StoryWeaver is truly a global repository of multilingual content. More than 1.5 billion children around the world are at home due to school closures, in an effort to control the COVID-19 outbreak. It’s a difficult time for everyone and the need for reading materials for children that can be accessed at home, is more urgent than ever. During this difficult time we hope you can Read At Home with StoryWeaver and continue to partner with us to bring joyful content to children the world over. 

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New on StoryWeaver:

'Moonlight in the Sea' (written by Kartik Shanker, illustrated by Prabha Mallya, and published by the Dakshin Foundation) tells the story of Fatima who lives on an idyllic island in the Lakshadweep, watched over by Nihla, the moon. It introduces young readers to the underwater world of colourful corals, fascinating fish, mysterious manta rays, grizzled old turtles and dancing dolphins.

Learn more about the people and places that inspired the making of 'Moonlight in the Sea', in this blogpost by Kartik Shanker, author, ecologist, and founder trustee of the Dakshin Foundation:

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As an aspiring wildlife biologist, you learn pretty early on not to expect National Geographic scenes when you visit a forest. It may take months to see your first elephant, years to see a tiger. It took me weeks of turtle walks to see my first olive ridley. But, put on a mask and a snorkel and stick your head under water at a good reef, and it looks pretty much like that last NGS show you watched.

I still remember the first time I went snorkeling in the Lakshadweep in 2001 – ‘the flurry of colour, the shock of shapes’. We were conducting sea turtle surveys there, and I spent every spare moment paddling around in the waters of the Kavaratti lagoon. A decade later, as part of Dakshin Foundation, we started a project on the tuna fishery in the islands. We monitored tuna using a participatory monitoring programme with the fishers, and one of our researchers, Mahima Jaini, conducted in-water surveys of baitfish. Around the same time, my student, Anne Theo had started her research on mixed species groups of reef fish.

At Agatti, the two of them would use Jaffer’s fishing boat to conduct their dives. Throughout their time there, his support for their field work and dive surveys was invaluable. Jaffer looked after them as he would his family. In the evening, he and his wife would visit with their daughter Nihla, then an adorable 3-year-old. His boat was named after her, Nihla Fatima.  The gentle ethos of the Lakshadweep, the still waters of the lagoons, the richness of its marine life, the solitary charm of Suheli all cried out for a story to be told.

Nihla inspired that story – about a little girl in the Lakshadweep, and the possibility that such girls could one day become marine biologists like Anne and Mahima.

I visited them frequently – happy times were spent diving off Jaffer’s boat. One time, we dived off Bangaram, saw some sharks, and then ate the most delectable fish biryani cooked on the boat.  Another time, the three of us made a trip to Suheli, an uninhabited island several hours by boat from Kavaratti. In 1979, my mentor, Satish Bhaskar, had spent 5 months there by himself during the monsoon to survey green turtles.  Many of these memories found their way into the narrative.

And then Prabha Mallya made the story come alive with her amazing and evocative illustrations. In my story, Nihla, the moon was a quirky character; through Prabha’s illustrations, she became a co-star. My niece’s daughter Ariana, age 2, was heard to say ‘When I grow up, I wanna be Nihla moon!" I guess that says it all.

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Click to read 'Moonlight in the Sea' 

A big thank you, Kartik, Prabha and the Dakshin Foundation, for open licensing this wonderful book and making it available on StoryWeaver!

Illustrations in this post are by Prabha Mallya, from 'Moonlight in the Sea', written by Kartik Shanker, published by the Dakshin Foundation.

Kartik Shanker is a founder trustee of Dakshin Foundation. An ecologist by training, Kartik has interests in both mountain and marine systems. His work with marine turtles in the last 20 years has led to broader interests in coastal and marine conservation. Currently, he serves as an Associate Professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc.), Bangalore. In addition to academic research, he is also interested in strategies to improve environmental education and the public understanding of science. This interest encouraged Kartik to establish Current Conservation, a magazine that bridges conservation and art by bringing together research professionals, writers and artists from different parts of the world. He is the author of the book From Soup to Superstar, a historical account of sea turtle conservation in India. In his spare time, Kartik also seeks to distract young minds through children’s stories which include Lori’s Magical Mystery, Turtle Story, The Adventures of Philautus Frog, and Moonlight in the Sea.

Dakshin Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation. Their mission is to inform and advocate conservation and natural resource management, while promoting and supporting sustainable livelihoods, social development and environmental justice. They adopt interdisciplinary approaches in our research and conservation interventions, drawing from the fields of ecology, conservation biology, sociology, economics, and law. Their work aims at building community capacity for conservation and enhancing community engagement in environmental decision-making. Their goal is to promote ecologically and socially appropriate approaches to conservation and management in coastal, marine and mountain ecosystems in India.

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