Pratham Books Champions : Geetika Bhat, Ashima Seth and Saloni Zutshi

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.

Rajesh Khar (editor, Pratham Books) attended the session conducted by Geetika, Ashima and Saloni on 8th September, 2012. He wrote ...

The session in Noida took place in Sai Kirpa temple in Sector 40, Noida and was conducted by Geetika Bhat, Ashima Seth and Saloni Zutshi. About 60 children participated in this session and were thrilled to be there. The story began, like many other sessions, with an introduction to Kolam and then progressed slowly. They also saw a puppet of Susheela, the main character of the story and enjoyed it thoroughly. The children listened to the story, tried their hands at making a kolam and finished by sharing some snacks that the storytellers had brought along for them.

Geetika also wrote to us saying:

With the support of Sai Kripa school staff, we conducted 1 and half hr session with 60 underprivileged children. 

The session started with a short song in signifying the four directions of the world i.e. Poorab,Paschim,Uttar,Dakshin to contextualized the physical location of Susheela.This was followed by the story of Suseela's Kolam. 

Next, a short poem was presented in an animated manner to reinforce the concept of a kolam and its usage as well as different regional names for kolam in India. This was followed by acitiviy - Kite making with paper and Tri color ribbons along with kolam drawing on the kite.

At the end of the activity each of the 60 children were called one by one to present their respective kolam on the kite.

The session ended with the distribution of a chocolate, a storybook, a box of crayons for each of the 60 children.

Thank you Geetika, Ashima and Saloni 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.