In the picture (from left to right order) – Shri Nagaraj Honnekeri, Director, SCERT. Shri Shailesh Sinai Zingde, Director of Education. Shri Pramod Sawant , Hon’ble Chief Minister, Goa. Shri Shripad Naik, Member of Parliament, North Goa. Smt Purvi Shah, Senior Director – StoryWeaver, Pratham Books. Shri Dinesh Arora, CCEO – Maharashtra and Goa circle, Indus Towers Limited
23rd January 2023
Launched by the Honorable Chief Minister of Goa, Shri Pramod Sawant, the ‘Goa is Reading’ initiative will set up a structured reading framework in 1200 schools across the state. The Directorate of Education is partnering with Pratham Books to launch ‘Goa is Reading’, an initiative to share the joy of reading with every child, in schools. Indus Towers, one of the world’s largest telecom tower companies and India’s leading provider of passive telecom infrastructure, offers service to this initiative as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility program. 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 inauguration took place by the Honorable Chief Minister of Goa, Shri Pramod Sawant, in the presence of Shri Nagaraj G Honnekeri, Director of SCERT, Director of Education Shri Shailesh Zingde, and school principals and teachers from across the state. He 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. Shri Nagaraj Honnekeri, Director SCERT, Shri Shailesh Zingde, Director of Education; Purvi Shah, Senior Director – StoryWeaver, Pratham Books all provided perspectives on the importance of developing a culture of joyful reading in 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 get 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 Program. These resources, are available for free, in English and Marathi language 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 National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasizes the importance of well-stocked school libraries and digital libraries to attain the goal of foundational literacy for all children by the year 2025. It recommends making quality children’s literature available in all local languages to build a culture of reading across the country, setting aside specific hours in school to nurture a habit of reading for pleasure from a young age. Stories and reading are an important part of children’s growth and development, encouraging them to build vocabulary, derive connections between stories and their own lives, and understand how different people think about different things. Children who read are able to think more, are able to express themselves more freely, and become independent learners.
Dinesh Arora, Circle CEO, Maharashtra & Goa Circle, Indus Towers Limited said,” In the last couple of years, internet connectivity through mobile towers has expanded access to education and technology. We congratulate the state of Goa for introducing ‘Goa is Reading’, an initiative that promotes reading habits among students through both physical and digital storybooks in English, Marathi and Konkani. At Indus, we have extensive CSR program that focus on education and skill development, and we are delighted to be a part of this powerful program that can potentially shape the reading habits of thousands of children, online and offline.”
For us at Planet-Goa, our team is driven by that feeling of exhilaration that one gets when discovering that something ‘unique’ and ‘new’ about Goa for our ever-so-discerning readers.
For us at Planet-Goa, our team is driven by that feeling of exhilaration that one gets when discovering that something ‘unique’ and ‘new’ about Goa for our ever-so-discerning readers.
