Pratham Books Champion : Vikram Sridhar

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.

Vikram Sridhar conducted a storytelling session along with the Pratham Books (Bangalore) team on 7th September, 2013. Vikram is a person dabbling with multiple interest . Vikram is a Story Teller connecting his interests in Theatre , Children and environment . He runs a Professional theatre group , Tahatto along with like minded friends and perform across Bangalore in other cities .Vikram tells stories at various public spaces and children gatherings . Apart from this Vikram works in the Marketing Space for an MNC .

We would like to thank the Oxford Bookstore for being our venue partner and supporting us in this initiative.

Vikram Sridhar wrote:

Language is not a barrier to share stories . A teller in English , sprinkled with few Hindi words . And a wonderful set of listeners who are used to Urdu as their first language but understand basic English . Connecting Paplu, the Giant and how he saved the village from the dacoits was just made easy by the sheer power of story telling and the interest in the children to listen and absorb bit by bit.

At no point was there a disconnect because of the language as the teacher too pitched in . What began as a session in English turned to a multilingual one with Hindi and Urdu.

And finally the children took the book and started reading ... Truly the essence of the day .

Thanks to Pratham Books for this wonderful platform for connecting every child to a book.

Thank you Vikram 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.