MANAGEMENT REPORT

Building the next generation of readers.

Pratham Books is fourteen years old. And our journey to put ‘a book in every child’s hand’, continues to be profoundly exciting and invigorating.

Our booklist has expanded dramatically, not only in number, but also in theme and style, creating a vast selection of diverse, well-imagined, beautifully illustrated titles to take to children in print and digital forms. This year, we introduced a new series of audio-visual books that were mobile–first. Which means, that they were written and designed to be an optimal reading experience on mobile phones which children could access anywhere – in classrooms with their

teachers, in community learning centres and in their homes. They are a big step forward in creating access to reading resources for children.

Technology continues to be a force multiplier, and our digital content platform, StoryWeaver, has made giant strides in providing open access to thousands of storybooks in over 100 languages. We are delighted to see our books find their way into libraries and classrooms around the world where children can learn and practise their reading skills; watch educators dip into our STEM books as supplementary resources; and look on as literacy organisations create digital libraries in resource-poor environments. Apart from being used for reading, we are delighted that

educators around the world have adopted StoryWeaver to create and version customised content for their children. From curriculum planners in the Ministry of Education in South Africa who created early reading resources for the schools in their region, to teachers in Haryana, India who translated over 74 books in Haryanvi, the dominant language of the state, StoryWeaver is fulfilling its promise of addressing the book scarcity that exists for children in mother tongue languages.

Our growing partnership network has helped take books to children in 24 Indian states, including some the most underserved areas, even as our Donate-a-Book platform helps schools, reading groups, and NGOs

raise funds by crowdfunding for the libraries they need.

We take great inspiration from our volunteer community, with their amazing passion for championing the joy of reading. Through our annual campaign, ‘One Day, One Story’, over 5000 volunteers, read Kottavi Raja and his Sleepy Kingdom in 26 languages to over 50,000 children. May our tribe of Champions increase.

Every year is special, and this one is no exception. We continue to set our course by the ‘last child’, and the journey is marked by mile-markers of collaboration, innovation, and invention. And we close the year, looking forward – to making reading a true source of joy and discovery

for more children. To creating more delight through our words and pictures. To having many more stories to tell.

Suzanne Singh, Chairperson
R Sriram, Managing Trustee

Every storybook we create is designed to delight a child.

To thrill her, inspire her, and make her want to keep coming back for more. It’s the reason diversity has been the guiding principle for our 2017-18 book list of over 500 books.

Storybooks like Janice Goes to Chinatown give you a vivid glimpse of Kolkata’s Chinatown, while Little Bird in the Big Mountains takes you all the way to the foothills of the Himalayas. Sailing Ships and Sinking Spoons isn’t just set in a monastery in Dharamshala, it’s also been written and illustrated by members of the community there.

Books like Anna’s Extraordinary Experiments with Weather, the fascinating biography of meteorologist, Anna Mani; Walking in the Wild, the story of Zakhuma, a forest guard and photographer in Mizoram; and The Seed Savers, about a village that starts a seed bank of its own, tell immensely inspiring stories drawn from real life, while being a refreshing break from conventional heroes for children.

walking in the wild, the story of zakhuma

Some books explored subjects seldom chosen for children, like Behind the Lie, set against a backdrop of domestic abuse. And, of course, there are several titles that provide pure delight for a child, whether A Book for Puchku, the tale of a girl who loves to read; Stick Your Tongue Out!, about different kinds of tongues; or even Food Monster, and Rainbow Sambar, which play with ideas like the shapes and colours of everyday food.

In keeping with our belief of an inclusive, diverse society, our books feature many under-represented characters, like the visually-impaired (Welcome to the Forest, and Ready? Yes! Play!). And, continuing our introduction of STEM concepts through stories are books like The Night the Moon Went Missing, about bioluminescence; Shh… Simmi is Listening, an exploration of how sound travels; Goby’s Noisy Best Friend, which explains symbiosis; and Off to See Spiders, about, well, spiders!

This year’s storybooks weren’t different in content alone. Several were “mobile-first” books, released in the form of PhoneStories, with music and sound effects, and voice-overs by popular artistes. These were released as a series on StoryWeaver, through QR codes in a popular children’s newspaper supplement, as well as on school WhatsApp groups. Additionally, dozens of our popular STEM titles found their way into video form, again, in no less than five languages.

Every new language we add is some child’s first language.

A language she speaks, feels, and understands well – and which will lead her to discover the joy of reading. In our quest to provide joyful reading material in mother tongue languages, we’ve scaled up our translation efforts dramatically. With over 450 books in Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Odia, Telugu, and Gujarati, we’ve multiplied our efforts by more than five times over the previous year.

Not only did we do this while adding to our existing team of translators, but we also succeeded in delivering language versions of storybooks at the same time as the originals, which meant that a story wouldn’t be published digitally just in English, but also in several lndian languages at the same time.

While we scaled up our deliveries, we also made sure to focus on the quality and cultural sensibility of our translations. To set the tone for our body of work, we conducted a special workshop, Translating For Children, calling upon the expertise of language and translation experts from different regions, as well as editors, and translators. The forum allowed for academic discussion, alongside practical applications, and left us refreshed, with new ideas, improved choices, and a shared understanding of the best ways to approach translations.

To change the game, we’re changing the scale.

UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report informs us that 40% of the world’s population does not have access to education in a language they understand. At StoryWeaver, we believe that technology can help us address the inequity of access. With 109 global languages already in our fold, we have now set our sights on creating localised libraries across many more mother tongue languages.

Our language partners, like Konkani Bhasha Mandal, 17,000 Ft Foundation, and the Ugandan Christian University (UCU), have helped translate our storybooks in 17 languages, to which our vibrant community of translators have added even more, resulting in the creation of hyperlocal libraries in 30 languages.

Translation Hackathons like the one we held in Haryana to translate books in Haryanvi allow us to tap the translation talent of educators, as well as lead to a seamless peer-to-peer review of the resulting work. Volunteer-driven campaigns drew upon the strengths of diverse and multilingual teams that wanted to contribute to the mission.

One such campaign saw 416 volunteers from Google offices across the world help create 1000+ books in 47 languages in 45 days. Of these languages, 16 were new languages added through the effort.

We’ve flanked our translation efforts with the introduction of innovative formats like mobile-friendly PhoneStories, a greater width of content, and a slew of user-led features and improvements to the platform itself. Curated Reading Lists across themes and reading levels help educators find the content they need faster, accompanied by helpful classroom activities. The Offline Library function enables infrastructure-poor classrooms to access books on the platform even when they have no internet connectivity.

It comes as little surprise that StoryWeaver has seen a growth of 172% in the number of users, with an increase of 139% in the length of their sessions. While India, USA, Philippines, UK, and Pakistan continue to be leading sources of our traffic, we’re happy to note that the UAE, Egypt, Indonesia, and Vietnam are emerging geographies that are making their presence felt, as well.

One such campaign saw 416 volunteers from Google offices across the world help create 1000+ books in 47 languages in 45 days. Of these languages, 16 were new languages added through the effort.

Our stories travel far and wide, to classrooms great and small.

Pratham Books is thrilled to have distributed 14,00,000 books through the year, all across the country. Our key partners include the Directorate of Education, Delhi, which established libraries in several government schools; East Godavari District Administration, which set up libraries in 300 government schools with 30,000 of our books; ASPIRE, which established libraries in Jharkhand, Odisha, and Delhi with over 1,00,000 books; as well as other education leaders, like Maharashtra Prathamik Shikshan Parishad, Room to Read, and Pratham Education Foundation.

Image used is for representational purposes only and may not be complete or accurate.

Our digital platform, StoryWeaver engaged and entertained schoolchildren through our extensive partner network.

In some regions, our books are reading resources in Digital Libraries, while in others, they help teachers with lesson plans. In some places, they help children learn and practise their language skills, while elsewhere, they have become part of learning apps that allow children to learn at their own pace. As a result, our network of thousands of classrooms regularly uses our books in many languages, including minority tongues like Konkani, Surjapuri, and Santali.

This year also saw StoryWeaver invited to three MHRD Conferences, and being part of several promising conversations with State Government bodies.

Our attempts to take our digital storybooks directly to the educators led to the discovery of a great new communication channel: teachers’ WhatsApp groups. These groups delivered delightful storybooks directly to teachers at anganwadis, who would then use them for read aloud sessions. The channel led to us engage with over 50,000 children in 2800 classrooms in just two months.

We’re building a reading India, one library at a time.

And we’re doing it by bridging the gap between schools and non-profits working with children, and the people who would like to help them. This year, Donate-a-Book hosted 89 campaigns for libraries, with the result that over 45,000 children in 17 different states will now enjoy over 38,000 new books.

A functional library goes a long way in contributing to learning outcomes, and storybooks spark curiosity and imagination. The platform helps schoolchildren in Leh and Ladakh, Jammu, and other remote places raise funds online for their library or reading program.

Memorable campaigns include one from Bageshwar, Uttarakhand, which raised funds for 3750 books, which will be accessed by over 1250 children. Let’s Open a Book, a non-profit that runs a library program in government primary schools in Delhi-NCR and Spiti Valley, also ran a campaign for their 15 libraries.

We believe that Donate-a-Book serves an important need – that of empowering and enabling schools and non-profits to bring joyful storybooks into the world of the children they work with.

Spreading the love of reading, one Champion at a time.

Every year, around International Literacy Day, Pratham Books conducts One Day, One Story, a nationwide volunteer-driven campaign to spread the joy of reading through storytelling. In its sixth edition, we had over 5700 Pratham Books’ Champions (#PBChamps) conducting more than 6300 storytelling sessions on and around September 8, 2017.

Sessions were scheduled in 26 different languages all across India, as well as 13 other countries. These interactive storytelling sessions are always conducted free of cost, to introduce thousands of children to the pleasure of joyful reading. From sessions in government schools located in a tribal belt of Rajasthan, to programs in a city apartment; from Skype sessions, to reading storybooks on a tablet – the focus is accessibility for all.

This year's storybook was Kottavi Raja and his Sleepy Kingdom, written by Yasaswini Sampathkumar, and illustrated by Henu. In addition to the printed book. Champions have used digital versions from the StoryWeaver platform, as well as audio versions recorded by Radio Mirchi to make their sessions as engaging and delightful as possible.

Like every year, One Day, One Story is a great reminder of the exceptional commitment of our Champions. Their ability to champion the cause of reading – in their own cities and towns, in nearby schools and non-profits, in their own neighbourhoods – is the most powerful celebration of International Literacy Day, and the opportunity for every child to read.