Pratham Books Champions : Sujatha Padmanabhan and Sanjay Sondhi

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.

Sujatha Padmanabhan wrote to us about the storytelling session conducted by her and Sanjay Sondhi on 8th September, 2012.

Sanjay Sondhi and I were busy planning for two nature camps for children to be held in Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, when Mala Kumar from Pratham Books wrote to me about International Literacy Day and the reading sessions being planned across the country. I bounced the idea off Sanjay and we both readily agreed to be part of the event. We anyway had a story reading session (The giving tree) in our programme! The workshop and camps were funded by the Shergaon Forest Division and the organization was done with help from the Bugun Welfare Society, Ecosystems-India and Titli Trust. 

The two nature camps were held at Lama Camp from the 6th to the 12th  of September. These were attended by 47 children and four teachers from four nearby schools. With each group we had a story telling session which included three stories: The giving Tree, Chuskit goes to school (in Hindi), and Susheela’s Kolam (the last two are publications by Pratham Books).

The children were enthused about being part of an International Literacy event. Illustrations were projected on a screen for The giving tree and Susheela’s Kolam while they were read out. Some of the children recognized Chuskit goes to school as this story is in the class 4 EVS text book.

Thank you Sujata and Sanjay 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.