A state education-teacher-parent chain is helping children in remote villages read and hear stories for social and mental well-being
A young boy listens to an audio story on his smartphone
Swaha Sahoo
Head, Parag Initiative
Launched Hawa Mahal, Library Khidki.
Parag collaborated with Centre for microFinance Rajasthan, and the governments of UP and Rajasthan to create multimedia content when Corona locked kids out of libraries
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When India locked itself up in March, the children of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh’s government schools weren’t happy about the holiday. They had been shut out of spaces where community libraries allowed them access to books and the world of stories.
For the last 15 years, Parag, a Mumbai-headquartered initiative of Tata Trusts, has worked to support school and community libraries, so that children, especially in secluded districts of the country, have free access to storybooks. "Most of these children come from underprivileged homes, where a reading culture doesn’t exist; their only access to reading material was at these school libraries. For the first few weeks, we struggled to offer them access," says Swaha Sahoo, who heads Parag. Sahoo, who believes that stories are important for the "social and emotional well-being" of children, realised that the digital space could help tide over this vacuum.
Swaha Sahoo
In Rajasthan, where Parag was already working with the state government to set up 30 modern libraries, she mooted the idea of sharing online links to stories, in a PDF format, which teachers, parents, and children could access. "That led to the creation of Hawa Mahal, a weekly one-pager, which incorporated stories that the children could listen to or read," she adds. Mainly for primary school children, the page is officially sent through RSCERT (Rajasthan education department) to school WhatsApp groups. The success of Hawa Mahal, now 10 weeks old, bolstered Parag to launch similar initiatives in other parts of the country. Less than a month ago, Parag launched Library Khidkhi in Uttar Pradesh, where PDF versions of storybooks, children’s magazines, and flipbooks, are sent twice a week through the office of Basic Education.
Both initiatives have seen teachers and parents come together to spread the love of storytelling among children. "Most teachers are already on WhatsApp. So, we used them, as well as our own facilitators to create parent WhatsApp groups. This helped build a long chain. When we share the material with the education department, they forward it to the teachers, who in turn share it with the parents. That’s how children have been accessing it," says Sahoo, adding that teachers from the villages will soon be co-opted to share audio clips comprising local folklore and tales.
While some of their audio stories have received more than 40,000 hits, Sahoo is conscious of the fact that most children she wants to reach have limited access to smartphones or high-speed internet. "We have made peace with the fact that not all children will be able to access our material. But we feel that some access is better than none at all. At least they are not being left behind. This will take time to grow." Sahoo now plans to introduce a similar model in Madhya Pradesh. "Children definitely need facilitators who can help them connect with a story. And that is always going to be at the core of our work. But, what we have learnt is that digital tools can support [what we do] wonderfully."
Log on to www.https://paragreads.in/
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