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Thursday 27 June 2013

Pratham Books Champions : Vatsala Deora, Preetika Suri and Tarun Varma

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 Vatsala Deora, Preetika Suri and Tarun Varma on 7th September 2012. He sent us this story.

The event at the Nigam Pratibha Vidyalaya (MCD School) Sad-ul-ajab, went off wonderfully well. It concluded at 1.00pm and about a hundred children from classes 2,3 and 4 enjoyed the session with three Teach for India fellows led by Vatsala Deora!

The session began at 11.55 in the school compound under the canopy of a lovely, huge Neem tree. The boundary wall behind served as the backdrop and had many a kites hanging from it. Vatsala began with a background to the words Kolam and Tamilnadu. The story unfolded slowly and she would pause for children's reactions every now and then. Her friend Tarun helped her with managing the group of children, organizing slates and chalk, paper etc. for them while the third friend, Preetika drew the big kolam on a chart paper that the Air Force had drawn in air in the story.

The storytelling was done in English and it was quite amazing to see the children belonging to this MCD school respond in English as well! The story took about half an hour to finish and other associated activities took about the same time and so this session lasted for slightly over an hour. A few children received colourful kites as incentive for interacting most during the session. They were so charged up by the time Vatsala and her friends finished the session that a bout of singing followed - 'reading gives us strength and reading gives us freedom' - children jumped and clapped and enacted the words along with these three wonderful young people who brought an hour of pure joy into their lives in serene surroundings of Said-ul-ajab.















Thank you Vatsala, Preetika and Tarun 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.

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