Pratham Books Champion : Elsa Mathews

For International Literacy Day (8th September), we had a dream - we wished that 100 people would volunteer to conduct storytelling sessions across the country. We ended up finding more than 250 champions to conduct storytelling sessions across the country. We will be sharing the stories of all our champions through our blog.

This story was sent by Elsa Mathews.

I conducted the storytelling session at the Macedonian Grace Asembly situated in Ashok Vihar, New Delhi.

Most of the children gathered were orphans from the Vineyard Home for children. There were about 50 children between the age group of 3-13. I started by telling them what is meant by international literacy day. Some of the older ones seemed to know the word literacy, then I asked them who liked to draw and almost each one of them raised their hands. Then I introduced Susheela to them as a girl who liked to draw Kolams; I explained to them that Kolams are rangolis and that pongal is a festival like Holi or Diwali celebrated in Tamil Nadu. I then took them through the story of Susheela and how she draws Kolams everywhere. I asked them if they had seen anyone drawing on the train and they said no and then when the bit about the air force officers came i explained to them about air force officers as people who protect our country. When I asked them whether it is possible for someone to make kolams in the sky they said No but when I showed them the picture they understood.

Later I aked them the question where will Susheela make her next Kolam? There were so many interesting answers: ship, water, t-shirt, car, plane

Activity: once the story telling session was over I collected a bunch of older kids who said they were interested in making rangoli. I was directed to an empty space in the building by the school principal where the kids made two beautiful big rangolis. 

The session lasted for about and hour, including the rangoli activity. 

Thank you Elsa for spreading the joy of reading!

View more pictures from the International Literacy Day Celebrations.

This blog contains stories sent in by all our champions. Browse through the blog for more stories. You can also go through the tags on the right side of the blog to find stories happening in your own city.

Note : If any of you want to be a Pratham Books Champion and join us on our journey of getting 'a book in every child's hand', write to us at web(at)prathambooks(dot)org.