Pratham Books Champion : Divya Behl

This International Literacy Day, Pratham Books has taken a 1000 steps towards a 'Reading India'

What started as a small step by Pratham Books to spread the joy of reading has become a movement. Last year Pratham Books initiated the One Day-One Story initiative on the occasion of International Literacy Day and we conducted over 250 storytelling sessions. This year we are delighted that over a 1000 sessions are happening across the length and breadth of the country.We will be sharing the stories of all our champions through our blog.

One of the most difficult things that I have ever had to do is to convince my mother to conduct a story telling session for a group of children on Literacy Day.

Why mom? To see the magic of amalgamating languages. Pratham Books' Initiative to conduct story telling sessions on the occasion of International Literacy Day was the perfect opportunity to experiment with languages and see what happens when you place a Punjabi speaking mom in a group of children migrated from Bihar and expect them to have fun. It all happened as I expected it to be and it was beautiful. 

The rule was to use native languages, and make other people understand them as well. It was amazing 

to see how students were switching from their languages (they couldn’t name the languages but they 

belong to Eastern Indic Langauges or Bihari) to Hindi and the facilitator was doing the same, switching 

from Punjabi to Hindi. 

Followed by the story telling session, student chose a few of them to be Paplu and had to design a dress for the rakshas. They were given discarded cloth pieces, calendars, safety pins etc and the result was quite hilarious.

Thanks to the Samagra Foundation in Dehradun, to provide the perfect spot!

Thank you Divya Behl 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.