Contributions by Katha as a Lead Partner

January 22, 2018

300m Challenge!

August 2017

What started as a pledge on 27th July 2017 is now in the implementation phase. And we thank our partners for their enthusiastic support in making every child read for

fun & meaning!

Over the last month much has happened, beginning with conversations with our partners about training workshops by Katha that focus on enhancing the joy of reading for their staff members and volunteers. Katha has also designed a handbook for student librarians with the help of library expert Amarjeet Gill of the

Singapore Library Initiative.

In our inaugural 300M Newsletter, we share the excitement of the first steps the 300M partnership has taken, in its first month. RIPL has indeed been infectious!

RIPL is the Reading as Inclusive Public Learning component of the 300M Challenge. Small steps by many individuals create huge impact for the millions of children who are the future wealth-makers of the nation. RIPL builds on the strength and learnings of 27 years of Katha’s work in helping children become fluent readers.

Here are the highlights of our collaborative work with 300m Challenge partners!

Amazon

RIPL is the reading campaign on the Internet! It is opening a 300M storefront within the Katha bookstore. The 300M books are being offered under a special scheme to garner more voluntary book contributions to the 300M partners’ Community Owned and Operated Libraries (COOL!). We hope to soon offer 300M specially priced books of our publishing partners also. Here is the link to the current Katha Amazon Storefront. SherNama Library: Katha has started a pilot with children and women in our communities, to help them become storytellers. The programme is supported by Amazon, which will bring SherNama ebooks on its own virtual storefront. A series of training workshops in SherNama tactics for our partners is being planned. More on this soon!

Aagaaz

The talented children of Aagaaz are fabulous voice-over artists and musicians who have enriched the free Katha Pitara App. We are in the testing phase of the app and will be launching the Beta version soon, with all Aagaaz and other partners present to RIPL the App to the 1.5 lakh Katha grassroots volunteers — the India Reading Corps!

Australian High commision

Her excellency, Harinder Sidhu attended our launch event and her enthusiasm was infectious. We are thankful for their support. AHC is funding our COOL centres and we hope to strengthen this partnership going forward.

Aseem’s Library

Aseem’s library has great experience in setting up and running Community Libraries. They work with 2500 children and many active volunteers. We would be giving DOYTs (Delhi one young team) training to the active volunteers who can go ahead and be reading mentors and form reading leagues. Also Aseem’s Library has a teacher at all of it’s libraries. These teachers would be provided with ILR training and they too can work with the children in an innovative way to spread the joy of reading. They will also support us to effectively run our COOL! centres and also work with our SherNama Project.

Bhagta Bharat will also take the reading campaign into NCR. It has identified 10 active leaders from Gurgaon and 15 from Noida who will get trained at Katha to use the eKit, App and the Each One Teach One (EOTO) module. They will in turn train 85 and 150 volunteers respectively in Gurgaon and in Noida, and then to communities in Mayur Vihar and Lal Bahadur areas, Delhi.

Bhagta Bharat

Bhagta Bharat RIPL is the reading campaign in the communities of East Delhi. It has identified 8 trainers and 300 active leaders (in the age group of 12-16 years) to become active members of the 300M Reading Corps! Katha will train these active trainers, the DOYTs (Delhi One Young Teams) to train the active leaders to form their own reading jujitsu leagues. Each master-student league will have 30 children in it. The DOYTs (Delhi One Young Teams) will also be trained in storytelling.

CURE

CURE’s presence in East Delhi (along with Bhagta Bharat) will help get every child into reading in these areas. Select volunteers at CURE will be trained in StoryPedagogy™ and Active Story Based Learning (ASBL). They will also learn how to train Master Student Librarians in these schools who will oversee the EOTO activities. The volunteers will in turn work with teachers of the government schools CURE works with. The objective is to take the EOTO model forward by helping the teachers train their students as Master Student Librarians who will take forward the reading leagues in their own schools.

CRY

CRY begins Katha’s I Love Reading campaign’s Kolkata and Chennai chapters with its amazing 5,000 volunteers! To begin with, the existing ILR modules are being translated into English to facilitate learning in non-Hindi speaking regions. We are also hosting an online knowledge sharing session on 13th September to also explore other ways to collaborate to.

With CURE, ILR moves into Savda Ghevra (picture on the left) , the largest resettlement colony in North-West Delhi. CURE has an active youth group which will come into the DOYTs training. Each member of this group will form a league with 30 children (5-10 years of age) and help them read. CURE will also identify women volunteers in 7,500 households who will be trained to encourage children to go to school, get into reading and get connected to the closest COOL! Centre. After the successful implementation of this model, we will move to other Hindi-speaking cities like Agra and Rourkela.

PVR

PVR will put their multiplex muscle behind the 300M campaign to turn it into a movement. They will soon be showing a 300M film, with all partners’ logos embedded, to raise awareness about volunteering. They will start with Delhi multiplexes and hope to move into all states where they are present. They will also host Book Banks in their film theatres, so that generous people can deposit their used books (preferably in the local language) into the banks for further distribution to the community libraries that 300M partners are starting.

Facebook

Facebook has given 300M ad credits to garner support for the 300M Challenge. We will be looking at increasing volunteers and tying up the FB ad credits to the work of our partners and their needs. FB’s support will RIPL across India to hopefully bring in partners from schools and smaller nonprofits in education. There is strength in numbers. And Facebook will help 300M staffers to reach out to large numbers, starting 8th September 2017.

PwC

PwC has actively begun its engagement with the 300M Secretariat as our knowledge partner. They will support the 300M Challenge with system streamlining, message mapping of stakeholders, and also relevant networking opportunities.

HelpAge India

HelpAge has identified 125 centres which can potentially house the 300M libraries. These libraries will serve the nearby communities. We are looking forward to this spreading so our partners can take support of HelpAge India’s generosity to link their senior citizens’ work with reading for children.

HelpAge and Katha launch the very first 300M Library in the Uttam Nagar centre on 8th September 2017. The first of many libraries will house 300 books (courtesy our generous donors) and will strengthen reading habits in children from nearby communities. Children from Sarvam Foundation will give a short performance on the joy of reading. All of you are welcome to join us!

In Process:

Discussions with SEWA and TFI are scheduled to be held in September to create a knowledge exchange partnership.

New Partners on board:

We’re extremely glad to welcome Ashoka Changemakers, Foundation of Universal Responsibility of His Holiness, United Way of Bangalore, and Worldreader to the 300M alliance.

Contributions by Katha as a Lead Partner

Tech as a Lever

We spoke about using Tech as a Lever for this Challenge. To this end, we have started the Katha Digital Lab, KaDL, to support the viewing of all 300M projects and work through a UI/UX lens. HULGUL KA PITARA APP: The Hulgul Ka Pitara has been tried and tested over the past 25 years. This unique series of books has systematically brought nearly a million children to learning Hindi for fun and meaning through the Active Story Based Learning techniques of StoryPedagogy™. The specially designed App builds on the books and activities that have been tried and tested and tweaked over the last 27 years, to bring children from non-literate families into more fluent reading. With Katha mentors, our children have regularly reached a 200-word vocabulary in about 90 days. The beta version of the e-Kit was released on 27th July 2017. We are now testing the App in select Katha communities of South Delhi with children who are familiar with the physical books—in the Hulgul ka Pitara series and also with those who are not. We’re hoping that by 8th September 2017—which marks Katha’s 30th anniversary— we’ll be ready with a real-time report with all the learnings from the tests and begin to make tweaks in the App to launch it soon! More news on this later

Becoming COOL!

An update on Community Owned and Operated Libraries

The 50 Community Owned and Operated Libraries (COOL!) that Katha has started take forward the fact that a book-rich environment makes India’s future reader-leaders! The 50 children’s libraries are located in slum clusters. Each will be linked to a larger non-profit library housed in a HelpAge India building. This, in turn, will be linked to a public library for children. We are happy to announce that 50 COOL! centres will be fully operational in Najafgarh zone, Karol Bagh zone, Civil Line zone, Central and South zone of Delhi on 8th September 2017—the start of Katha’s 30th year with children. A special Student Librarians Handbook will give the 50 Katha Fellows ideas for activities. And a special certificate course on small business management will hopefully help these young people become edupreneurs!

SherNama– Urban Storytelling

Katha Holistic Early Learning (KHEL) Program, we have identified adults and children in 50 communities under Project SherNAma who will meet to discuss and tell their stories that will be published thereon.