Giant castles, princes and princesses, talking animals, adventurous islands…these were a big part of our imaginations in our childhood, thanks to all the wonderful books that we’ve read and enjoyed. Many of us are still as passionate about reading and stitching ourselves into stories. What if we could turn this passion into something that will help children gain access to language?
This led to the initiation of The Wordsworth Project, founded by Young India Fellow, Varsha Varghese and co-founded by her classmates, Priyanka Roychodhary and Rahul Sreekumar. Varsha’s love for books and her experience as a teaching volunteer in Make A Difference (MAD) while in college served as the inspiration for this project.
They aim to create interactive reading spaces in low resource schools and learning centres, equipped with books catering specifically to the child’s reading level. Mindful that books alone cannot make language accessible, they have volunteers who teach kids basic topics like nouns, prepositions, adjectives through interactive activities. Each child’s progress is checked with the help of fun assignments and qualitative feedback from the volunteer reading facilitators.
Currently, they are functioning in two places in Delhi, a community learning centre in East Delhi run by two Teach for India alumni and a community centre by the Kutumb Foundation.
In the following semester, the WordsWorth Project plans to extend to more centers, create their own curriculum and modules and reach out to more kids. Over the summers they are running an internship programme that would build capacity to meet their goals. They are also trying to raise funds to realize their expansion plans over Milaap.
So if you are in Delhi or otherwise and would love to help The WordsWorth Project, do reach out!
Do check out their Facebook page: The WordsWorth Project.
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