Literacy for a Billion in India!

Dear Friends, 

I hope you're all doing well.

A few months ago I shared the news that we have partnered with a not-for-profit called Khun Ta Nau Welfare Society located in Namsai District in the state of Arunachal Pradesh (northeastern India) to produce AniBooks (animated stories with "Same Language Subtitling") in Khamti. 

Firstly, a recap: Khamti is a tribal language spoken by an estimated 5,000 people mostly located in the north-eastern states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, in the Dikrong Valley, Narayanpur, and the north bank of the Brahmaputra. 

We have partnered with Khun Ta Nau Welfare Society located in Namsai district in Arunachal Pradesh, a registered Society that works in the field of education and works closely with the local education department, the Government of Arunachal Pradesh, which is supporting the production of AniBooks in Khamti. 

The goal of the project is to make 4 AniBooks (Animated Stories) in Khamti (1 new AniBook and convert 3 existing AniBooks into Khamti).

Latest updates: given the challenges we faced to find language resources, we decided to divide the project into 2 phases. In the first phase of the project, with the help of the Khun Ta Nau Welfare society, we focussed on finding good local resources i.e. language experts who can translate, review and narrate children's stories in Khamti, and convert 3 animated stories that BookBox (our social edtech partner) has already produced into Khamti.  

In the second phase, we will work with the Khun Ta Nau Welfare Society’s team and BookBox to produce 1 new AniBook from Khamti culture. We have started the process of identifying good local stories and artists who will help us draft and illustrate the new story.

There were many challenges that we faced while working on the stories. As many northeastern regions in India are underdeveloped, we had to overcome issues like erratic power supply, and very poor mobile network and internet connections.

Apart from finding good experts who could translate, narrate and review the stories, finding a good person who could convert the handwritten translations into digital format was an issue. After many discussions between the Khun Ta Nau Welfare society team and BookBox, we decided to use the “Tokmaai Tai” font in the subtitles. Ms Deshmukh is the one leading this project from our side. She had travelled to Namsai to work with the Khun Ta Nau Welfare Society's team. The other team members who are working on this project are Ms Mariadassou, Mr Rosario and Mr Amudhan. 

We have shared the 3 completed AniBooks with the Khun Ta Nau Welfare Society team awaiting their approval, and also plan to share it with organisations that are interested in promoting tribal languages. We also plan to launch the 3 Khamti AniBooks on YouTube to spread the language across the world.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Warmly,

Parthibhan