Joining hands in sharing the joy of reading with every child, the Directorate of Education is partnering with Pratham Books to launch ‘Goa is Reading’, an initiative to promote reading in schools. This is supported by Indus Towers, one of the world’s largest telecom tower companies and India’s leading provider of passive telecom infrastructure, as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility programme, states a press release.
The campaign will impact young learners across the state of Goa and will run in government schools, schools aided by the state government and private independent schools.
The main objective of the ‘Goa is Reading’ intervention is to promote reading habits among students by setting up a structured reading framework for schools. Through this initiative, which is in line with recommendations of the National Education Policy (2020) and the NIPUN Bharat Guidelines, schools and teachers will have access to a large repository of openly licensed high-quality English and Marathi children’s storybooks and supplementary resources for Grades 1 to 8 via the Pratham Books Reading Programme. These resources, which can be read for free, will be available in English and Marathi on Pratham Books’ open-source digital platform, StoryWeaver (www.storyweaver.org.in). Physical reading corners will also be set up in classrooms with the Library-in-a-Classroom from Pratham Books.
The initiative was launched by Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant. The launch event was attended by school principals and teachers from across the state. Nagaraj G Honnekeri, Director of SCERT, welcomed the gathering, followed by Director of Education, Shailesh Zingde delivering the inaugural address. Dr Pramod Sawant officially launched the intervention by unveiling the ‘Goa is Reading’ campaign poster and presented the Library-in-a-Classroom from Pratham Books to a school in Sanquelim constituency with a pledge to take the campaign to all schools across the state of Goa.
