We are proud to inform all our readers that Pratham Books, Bangalore is a finalist in the Google Impact Challenge Award. Pratham, a nonprofit children's publisher, has always been an innovator in tapping digital medium to enable literacy. Winning the award would mean more money to create an open-source platform for children's books.
Purvi Shah of Pratham Books writes "Our project will build collaborative web platforms that solve the three major problems that affect children in India – a very low number of books available for them, a lack of linguistic diversity of books and a lack of access to funding for libraries and books so that children can experience the joy of reading."
To share some more information from Pratham...
Nearly 50% of Indian 5th graders currently read at a 2nd grade level. This is due in part to a scarcity of books, and to a lack of reading material available in their language. With a Global Impact Award, Pratham Books will provide kids with easy access to language-appropriate reading materials by building a collaborative, open platform that lets people share, translate and create children's e-books. Over the next three years, this project will create 20,000 new e-books in a minimum of 25 languages and enable 200 million total book reads.
I think it'd be great for teachers, parents, librarians around the country to promote literacy among their students and children. The platform would also enable children to read, share, critique and review books. Children can create their own stories and share it on the platform. The scope will be far-reaching in education, especially helpful to teachers working with first generation readers who may not be able to access books easily.
Whether we view it from the perspective of teachers or from the perspective of the creators of stories (authors and illustrators), the idea is highly meaningful and the benefits cannot be overemphasized. So please take your time to vote for Pratham. The last day to cast your vote is tomorrow.
Please click here to vote. Thank you!
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
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