Pratham Books Champion : Rojee Maharjan

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.

This story was sent to us by Rojee Maharjan. Rojee has a Masters degree in Social Work and is currently engaged with Teach For Nepal as a Fellow.

This is the very first time to celebrate the International Literacy Day in my entire life. When I came to know about Pratham Books Champion and its campaign I registered my name for the One day-One story Campaign. The trend of the organization to celebrate the day with a story is very interesting. Following the same, I planned accordingly for my story telling program.

Banner for the program

I engaged some of my students who are interested in drawing into the drawing activities. A week prior I assigned around 7 students to draw the pictures of the story – Paplu, the Giant. As we have festival on the International Literacy Day, and the day before it was holiday, so I planned my program on 6th of September for 6th and 7th graders.

Drawings made by students

Also I planned to introduce some of the words of story as new words along with their meaning to students. Along with that, I made arrangement to have presentation through projector so that students can find the program more interesting.

As planned, on the day of the program I displayed all the drawings in the program.

Drawings by students displayed in the program.

As this is my first time, I narrated the story using both English and Nepali languages so that they can perceive it properly. I conducted the program in very interactive way; asking questions to students, letting them to think what might happen next, talking with them friendly. In between my narration, I also make them learn some of the words along with the meaning. Students actively participated in the program; they were answering, reading the words and predicting the story themselves.

Narrating the story in the program.

At the end of the story, I asked them what they have learnt through the story. And this is the best part of the overall program as I got many different morals of the story from students themselves. The morals that students have expressed were out of the box and related it with their daily life. I want o share some of the morals that my 6th and 7th graders shared in the program:

• We should be good and helpful.
• If we are good then things also go good to us and vice versa.
• We should not create problems to others. If others are in problems then we should help them.
• We should not be self centered; we should think for our society as well and work for it.
• Though the Paplu was giant, he was good enough and we should be good and decent like Paplu.
• We need to maintain peace and harmony in the society.
• We should help our friends and respect everyone.

Students sharing what they’ve learnt after hearing story.

These morals that the students drew from the whole story made me feel very happy as I felt they have understood the story and they came t know much more about being good and lots more.

And finally I want to thank Teach for Nepal for letting me to know about this campaign and of course to Pratham Books for such wonderful idea and for the beautiful story, Paplu, the Giant.. :)

Thank you Rojee 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.