By Lisa Heydlauff | CEO
We've been working on the Childre's Scrappy News Service quietly for some time now. Then, on November 14th, 2017 everything changed. November 14th is Children's Day in India, it's when by the sea in a fishing village in South Mumbai, we built the Children's Scrappy News Service newroom made of junk and once-loved things. A girls' football team flew in from Jharkhand, we live-streamed from Mumbai to Bengaluru to two locations in Bihar, India. We had so much fun. Everyone we knew stopped by or tweeted their best wishes. At one point #ScrappyNewsService was all-India #2 trending on Twitter, just below #Childrensday. That's quite a feat for a small compnay with a new idea.
It's been a long journey. Why are we sharing this news with you now, on our platform about 'design-driven stories teach children skills at school'?
Because for us, Scrappy is the glue. It sticks together everything we've done over the past 14 years in India. It's what we've learned about what works in government schools that are offline. You need to be entertaining. You need to find something that kids and parents can be a part of together. You need something that anyone can be a part of, something that anyone can do. Scrappy for us means to create something out of nothing to change the way things are. And that's important, because we're not all online or speak English, we don't all have all of the perfect pieces lined up to make what we want to happen, happen. But if we believe in our own ability to be scrappy, we're ready now for the kids revolution and it starts right here, right now.
The Children's Scrappy News Service is a news-talk-game show run by two kids and a gender-fluid robot called Scrappy. In a newsroom made of junk and once-loved-things two kid anchors and their wacky guests get to the bottom of the biggest problems we face. Why is there no place to play? How do get every dog a job? Let's get the plastic out of the ocean! TV, aired on Sundays at 11am, kicks off 'what you can do' campaigns that are followed up on our global digital channel www.scrappynews.com and on the ground, in offline schools (our DNA), there are scrapbooks made of recycled materials that empower kids to build their own newsrooms, find a story, find solutions and make their own shows.
We're proud to be made in India. We're excited to move to new countries, connecting kids around what they care about and what they'd like to change. As 2017 comes to a hustling, bustling close, we want to thank you for believing in possibility, we wanted to thank you for being scrappy.
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