Page 57 - Tehelka Issue 15 August 2018

interview

Challenge, with technology as a lever. ing. The user-friendly app is entirely as kindness, climate change, gender,
in Hindi and has six of Katha’s stories etc. The series comprises five books:
Katha has more than 65 Community available as digital books, animated My Big Book of Earth, My Big Book of
Owned & Operated Libraries (COOLs) videos as well as interactive games. Global Warming, My Big Book of Kind-
or learning centres that have been Free for all, it connects volunteers with ness, My Big Book of Girls and My Big
set up in people’s homes in Delhi. Tell children from under-served com- Book of Dogs.
us more about the idea behind this. munities to enable digital learning. These are designed for easy reading
We claim helplessness in the face of Based on Katha’s StoryPedagogy TM, and reference, with illustrations and
entrenched poverty. We talk about our the narrative revolves around themes photographs. These anthologies of fic-
innate goodwill for families in margin- of gender equality, inclusivity and tion, non-fiction and poetry pieces will
alized communities. We would never diversity and contributes to a child’s also provide useful material for class-
dream of cutting a branch that we are holistic growth. room projects, debates and discussions.
perched on; of engaging children in The Thinkbook series project was
building the glass and concrete aspira- Katha also has an interesting generously supported by Ashoka
tions of modern India. But we — as indi- THINKBOOKS series for children Changemakers for the Public and Ora-
viduals, as governments — exploit every on issues like global warming, cle Giving for young changemakers.
loophole our inadequate child labour environment, etc. Tell our readers My Big Book of Kindness will help
law allows. more about this series. young readers understand the indis-
The pre-primary and primary school Katha recently launched its Thinkbook pensability of being kind. My Big Book
children of today are going to be the series with an aim to draw the atten- of Earth and My Big Book of Global
workforce of the 2030s. But there are tion of young minds to big ideas such Warming explore pertinent issues of
few programmes for early school goers.
What the 21st century needs is creativity,
innovation, problem-solving, entrepre-
neurship and a drive to excel. But basic
education seems to be less important
in the grand scheme of things than the
mission of skilling the Indian youth by
the lakhs.
So, we are not fazed by a UNESCO
report of September 2016 that says,
“India will be half a century late in
achieving its universal education
goals; hence, we will achieve universal
primary education only by 2050;
universal lower secondary educa-
tion only by 2060; and universal upper
secondary education only by 2085!”
The community libraries were set up
with a simple idea behind it. Our grass-
roots volunteers came forward for the
cause. They were happy to run these
libraries. We did massive book dona-
tion drives and collected over 30,000
storybooks.

Katha Khazana, Katha’s first
reading app, has animation, games,
characters and narration. Tell our
readers what to look forward to in
this app.
Katha Khazana uses the power of im-
mersive storytelling as a legitimate
pedagogical tool to help children from
the age of 4 to 12 read for fun and mean-

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