A New Digital Platform in India Wants to Provide Books to Every Child
With
more than 800 languages spoken in the country, access to written stories in
every native tongue is limited.
In the Northern India state
of Himachal Pradesh, about 45 miles from the Dalai Lama’s residence, lies a
village called Suja, where Tibetan Children’s Villages is located. While the
school’s library has enough books for teens in their native language,
contemporary, entertaining material for younger readers is completely missing.
“Books for primary grades have hardly been written in Tibetan,” says Tenzin
Dhargyal, a senior English teacher at TCV School.
Six
months ago, Dhargyal discovered StoryWeaver, a digital storehouse of
multilingual books for kids where users can read, write, translate, modify, and
even download books. He fell in love with it. “It has so many relatable stories
for children,” he says. Dhargyal requested Tibetan script be added to the
platform, and in no time he had translated the first story and was using it
with his students.
Seeing his work, a few more
Tibetan educators jumped onto the bandwagon. Today, StoryWeaver has 52 stories
in Tibetan, of which Dhargyal will soon be printing three into books for his
library. And this month, his secondary school students will be introduced to
StoryWeaver so they can translate at least one book as part of their winter break
homework.
Tibetan-language speakers are
not the only ones benefiting from this first-of-its-kind open-source publishing
platform.
Suchana, a community group
that focuses on education and health, is translating stories on StoryWeaver in
Santali and Kora, two tribal languages that lack written stories.
India has more than 800
spoken languages and dialects, many of which don’t have their own script.
Typically, most children’s content is produced either in Hindi or English. Very
few publishers cater to other languages, so access to stories in a child’s
native tongue is limited, causing a decrease in learning opportunities.
UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report estimates
that “40% of the global population does not access education in a language they
understand,” which can be especially detrimental to poor children, as their
already limited educational opportunities become less available.
StoryWeaver is the brainchild
of Pratham Books, an Indian publisher working with the aim of “putting a book
in every child’s hand.” To address the critical shortage of reading material
for children, Pratham Books has published affordable books for kids in 18
languages in the last 12 years. Suzanne Singh, chairperson at Pratham Books, says
that StoryWeaver was born to extend its reach to all 300 million children in
India. “We felt the need to be innovative and decided to pursue a digital
strategy,” she notes.
StoryWeaver has 2,500 books
in 53 languages on its platform. “The ease of our embedded story creator and
translator tool is something our users love,” says Singh.
Reaching kids in cities has
been easy, thanks to internet accessibility. “But it’s important that all
children have equitable access to joyful reading material in their own
languages to build a reading habit,” Singh says.
With its outreach partners,
StoryWeaver has been able to influence children in underserved rural
communities, where the digital infrastructure and connectivity can create a
roadblock for reading and learning. Educators and storytellers are downloading
stories and using them as wall projections, flash cards, reading comprehension
modules, and activity books, as well as in local language apps and in Braille
books.
In the last 14 months, the
number of languages on StoryWeaver has doubled, and almost all new ones added
have been at the request of users. The organization is working with passionate
Indian linguists to add languages that are at risk of dying out. “We hope we
can play a small role in their preservation,” Singh says.
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
