Making India Read

How much does childhood impacts the person you become?

How much impact the books you read while going to school make once you step out in the world?

How much influence such books have on your thoughts, beliefs and actions?

I am sure almost all of you shall agree that the books we read during our school days have a long lasting impact on how we grow up as an individual.  Books are the medium through which we see the world around us.  Irrespective of whether it is a novel, comic strip, biography, short story or mythology; all this plays a significant part in our upbringing.

Now imagine a scene where you as a child do not have any book to read.  There is no one with whom you can discuss about the stories you read last night before going to sleep.  This is where Pratham Books, a not-for-profit initiative by Pratham, started in 2004 with an objective of book in every child's hand, decided to make a difference.

Rohini Nilekani, who is the founding member of Pratham Books and the chairperson, spoke last year in TEDxGateaway held at Mumbai about the efforts taken by Pratham Books to achieve its objective.  Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012.

There are children which goes to school but do not have anyone in their family who can help them in reading.  To ensure that their school education is not wasted, it is necessary that they have resources to practice how to read.  Pratham Books decided to provide this resource to such children.

Books published by Pratham are available at very low cost at various places / schools / library in remote areas.  Pratham Books partnered with willing authors, readers, teachers to expand their presence and offerings.  Over the last 9 years, Pratham Books have published 1573 books in 11 languages and distributed 10.3 million books all over India.

Last year, they also carried out a special initiative on International Literacy Day, wherein across 28 states of India 419 school teachers read their books to approx 20,000 children.

This is a great initiative undertaken by Pratham Books having a long term positive impact on the future generation.

PS:  I recollect receiving tweets from Pratham Books last year about their initiative on International Literacy Day and inviting me to contribute by reading for children in my locality.  I was not aware about the work Pratham does in this field and use to ignore those tweets.  Now since I know the noble cause for which they are contributing, I shall surely try to contribute to the extent possible and I feel we all should do that.

Disclaimer: This post is part of Indiblogger's The Idea Caravan contest wherein Indibloggers were invited to view the videos of TEDxGateway Mumbai held last year and blog about the various ideas presented in those videos which are destructive and path breaking and can lead to positive future impact on the society.  There are some gifts to be given to all bloggers whose post gets selected and prizes to be won in a contest.  To that extent, this post may be considered as a paid post.