The African Storybook Project Starting in 2013...

This blogpost is taken from the SAIDE December newsletter

Saide is soon to launch an exciting new project aimed at contributing to the improvement of reading and literacy for young African children. The project is funded by Comic Relief. Tessa Welch provides background to the project and reports on a workshop that Saide held recently with potential project partners.

The African Storybook Project (ASP) will create and encourage the use of a digital library of stories for the first few years of reading in digital formats, openly licensed, with a process and tools for translating and versioning stories for local African languages and contexts. This will enable users to upload and share versions of the stories in their local languages, providing numbers of stories in a range of languages way beyond the scope of conventional publishing.

In this way we aim to provide African children with sufficient familiar language stories for enjoyable reading practice to create a firm basis for literacy development.

The initial pilot will take place in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda.

We held a workshop on 10th November this year to explore the key issues before starting the project. We thought it would be a good idea not only to discuss but also to experience different ways of creation, presentation and translation/versioning. An account of the sessions is followed by our noteson key issues explored, and finally, much valued advice from participants. 

Initial issues

• Issue 1: What types of stories will be part of the African Storybook Project?
• Issue 2:Translation and versioning
• Issue 3: Teachers and parents as vital role players in children learning to read
• Issue 4: How do we provide illustrations for contributed stories in a cost effective but high quality way?
• Issue 5: What is involved in putting child-created stories on a website?
• Issue 6: How do we deal with the tension between providing quality stories (curation) and giving users the freedom to upload their own stories (experimentation)?
• Issue 7: What technological models of delivery or creation/uploading of stories should be used? High tech or low tech or both?

Next steps

Story Acquisition
We need a critical mass of stories in a range of languages in order to be able to start work in the pilot countries in the middle of next year.

We are aware that there is quite a lot of free material already on the website and we already have a process for exploring, assessing, downloading and categorising this material systematically.

We are also inviting all interested parties to submit stories to us. If you are interested in helping us, here are the guidelines:

Our main interest is stories that children can read themselves when they're in the first stages of reading - a few words or a sentence a page, with an accompanying illustration - althrough there is place for more difficult read-aloud stories as well. We're looking for African stories in languages spoken in Africa that will appeal to African children up to the age of 9 or 10. You can send us typed up stories with or without illustrations, or scanned PDF stories with illustrations, or recordings of stories, songs and games. When you send us a story, please also send the information about the story as per the attached form. Send the stories to: tessaw@saide.org.za and jennyl@saide.org.za. If your stories are too large to email, let us know and we'll invite you to our Dropbox folder where you can upload large files free of charge.

PartnershipsThe African Storybook Project will be a project of partnerships - we do not see ourselves in competition with other projects, but cooperating with and complementing existing initiatives in ways that are mutually beneficial.

Through the work of Judith Baker over a number of years, the project has a list of over 40 potential partners in the three pilot countries of Kenya, Uganda and South Africa, but also in Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone,South Sudan and Zambia. In addition, there are possible partnerships through organisations that work across Sub Saharan Africa such as the TESSA programme and the Canadian literacy organisation, CODE.

We intend in the new year to consolidate and concretise these partnerships through the development of memorandums of understanding and careful collective planning.

But we are also continually extending our partnerships.

If you are working in early literacy or children's book development and would like to partner with us, please contact either tessaw@saide.org.za or Judithbakr@gmail.com.

Reliving the initial workshop of the African Storybook Project

As mentioned in the previous post the initial workshop on 10 October 2012 was a day to remember. In this post we will relive the day and bring you videos, podcasts and reflections from the workshop.

Purpose of the workshop
The workshop was held to explore key issues in the development of a digital library of local language stories for young African reader. After the welcome and introductions an overview was given of the kinds of materials that we'd like to have in the digital library.  This was presented by Tessa Welch and Judith Baker. 

Tessa, the project leader

Judith Baker

Kamisihibai, the Japanese Art of Storytelling
The presentation on the Japanese art of Kamisihibai by Jemma Kahn held us spellbound, and this was followed by a discussion  of how the techniques and rules of Kamishibai could work digitally for children’s stories. Here is a video of Jemma presenting her stories. 

Jemma's video

A session of games, riddles, tongue twisters was led by Sheila Drew. This was the time when we found the group members who had pieces of our cut-up puzzle picture, and then created a story together. One member of each group related the group's story to all the participants.

Sheila Drew

Creating a story together

Child created and illustrated stories
The presentation of child created/illustrated stories, with ideas for how this kind of project could described and replicated was given by Glynis Clacherty. Glynis elaborated on the process of story development she used with refugee children during a holiday programme in Johannesburg.

Glynis Clacherty

Translating and versioning stories

This session was based on a humorous story called Refiloe and the washed chickens. It centred around performances of a section of the Refiloe and the washed chickens story in Setswana and isiZulu with a discussion of translation issues in treating comedy led by Nicholas Welch and Jeremiah Mntonga. We were exposed to improvisation techniques which encouraged all the workshop participants to contribute to the version. 

We also discussed how to (and whether or not we could) version Refiloe and the washed chickens for much younger learners, and this was followed by a brainstorm of ideas for illustration. 

Nicholas Welch and Jeremiah Mntonga 

'One hot Saturday afternoon' by Jefferson Shabalala

Judith Baker leading a discussion

Video

Further discussions

We talked about ways of collecting and organizing stories...What? Where? How? And what do we do if...? 

Video of the workshop

Video

Reflections and podcasts

To conclude this post here are two written and podcast reflections given after the workshop:

Elinor Sisulu (Puku Books)

I found the workshop instructive and inspiring. This session about the stories of the children I found it really very moving and I just felt that it really touched alot of things which I had been grappling with and concerned about. It just felt very real to me and authentic. And I feel that this project is really reaching where other initiatives have failed. So I want to see it get stronger and stronger. And I could also see from my own work just the kinds of intersections and the possibilities for synergy. 
Read more at this link...

Elinor's MP3 podcast

Robert Muponde (Professor of English, Wits University)

I think just to start off, this is the first time I have been in a workshop like this where we are discussing children’s books. I work at Wits where we discuss adult books, Shakespeare and the rest. But I have been involved in children’s literature but almost like on the fringes, I didn’t have a directive where its kind of multi-sectorial, where people and illustrations, performances in various languages, speaking Zulu, English. I think it was a very multicultural setup. So I've learnt quite a lot of things. One of the things... 

Read more at this link...

Robert's MP3 podcast

Introducing the African Storybook Project...

A reflection by Fiona Beal from SchoolNet
If you had been walking past the Boardroom in the offices of Saide (South African Distance Education) in Johannesburg on Saturday 10 November 2012 you would have heard loud hoots of laughter. If you had tiptoed to the door and peeped inside to see what was happening you might have seen a group of adults sitting totally engrossed in a very unusual form of storytelling.

Jemma Khan demonstrating the art of Kamisihibai 

South African performance artist Jemma Khan was presenting some of her stories based on the unique style of Japanese storytelling known as the art of Kamisihibai. In the YouTube video below Jemma explains some of the features of this unusual form of storytelling. 



At the end of the story you would have heard the group calling, “More! More!” and certainly you would have smiled as another story was whipped out and related with deep emotion.

Later on as you walked past the boardroom again you would have heard loud guffaws of laughter. This time when you peeped on you would have seen the words of a story up on a screen and the audience acting out the story with great enjoyment with Nicholas Welch, a young South African comedian and his colleagues calling out the next form of action. 

Nic and Co getting the workshop participants involved

You might even have heard an event being related from the point of view of two cows who had been silently observing an incident as they chewed the cud (Nic and co once again).

Two cows commenting on an incident they had observed

You would have certainly been highly entertained by JeffersonTshabalala in his performance of the Xhosa weatherman.  In fact, at this stage you would have stayed, sat down and joined the fun.

Jefferson Tshabalala's enthusiastic weather report

It was a day to remember.  If a school day was like this day then an enormous amount of learning would take place. This was the initial workshop of the African Storybook Project which is due to be launched in early 2013.Those of us at the workshop were exposed to so many exciting methods of reading and writing stories. We heard how an author extracted stories from children in a holiday club. We played fun storytelling games where we received pieces of a puzzle, had to find the rest of the picture, quickly create a group story and relate it to the whole group. We discussed so many aspects of reading and writing. This was a day when reading and writing came alive. 

Find the missing pieces and create a story

You'll be hearing a lot more about the African storybook project in 2013 when it is officially launched by Saide. The project is  funded by Comic Relief in Britain for a four year period and the initial pilot will involve three countries namely South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. The end result will be a lovely website of African stories in many African languages and in many different.formats which will contribute to the improvement of reading and writing for young African children. We will elaborate on this initial workshop and the project itself in future blog posts.