Pratham Books Brings Multilingual Audio Stories to Children Across India

As schools around the world are indefinitely closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly important to find new and innovative ways to keep children engaged and curious. Missed Call Do, Kahaani Suno, a campaign from Pratham Books in partnership with United Way India, aims to do just that – with a simple missed call, children can listen to delightful audio stories on the phone in English, Hindi, Marathi and Kannada.

Now in its second edition, Missed Call Do Kahaani Suno strives to reach children everywhere using any type of phone, even a basic feature phone.

Listeners can give a missed call for free and receive a call-back to their phones, where they can select the language of their choice and the age group of the child, and then listen to two audio stories back to back. They can even call again and listen to new stories every time. After the call, they receive an SMS directing them to read thousands more stories in the language of their choice on StoryWeaver, a digital platform from Pratham Books that provides free and open access to multilingual storybooks for children to learn and practise reading.

Missed Call Do, Kahaani Suno gives children across India access to over 300 audio stories from Pratham Books. These stories will help foster listening skills, build vocabulary, and develop an enthusiasm for reading.

“The audio stories on offer deal with a diverse range of subjects that explore concepts of science, technology, maths, wildlife and biodiversity, family, friendships, life skills and more. Children are exposed to many new ideas through these stories that help them engage with the world around them with curiosity, imagination and empathy”, says Himanshu Giri, CEO, Pratham Books.

About Pratham Books
Pratham Books (www.prathambooks.org) is a not-for-profit children’s book publisher founded in 2004 with the mission to see ‘a book in every child’s hand’. In recent years, Pratham Books has leveraged technology to further its mission with StoryWeaver (www. storyweaver.org.in), a first-of-its-kind digital platform providing open access to thousands of multilingual stories for free, and Donate-a-Book (www.donateabook.org.in), a unique crowdfunding platform that’s helping build libraries for the children who need them the most.

United Way India
United Way India (UWI) is a part of the United Way Worldwide network and is a registered non-profit in India. www.uwindia.org

“The lockdown is affecting the emotional well-being of everyone, more so of children. We are happy to support Pratham Books’ Missed Call Do Kahaani Suno campaign, to reach out to children with beautiful stories on the phone. This initiative is an opportunity to engage children across the country through the joy of storytelling and reading, and also to communicate good health behaviour to children”, says Manish Michael, CEO, United Way India.