QUEEN’S ROAD: Azim Premji Foundation organises children’s literature festival, KathaVana annually with the intent of supporting educators in bringing children and literature together. This multilingual festival brings together children, storytellers, publishers, teachers, academicians and other educators to celebrate and explore the world of stories meant for the young. KathaVana has a special focus on working with children in government or low-fee paying private schools, in keeping with the overall vision and mandate of Azim Premji Foundation.
This year’s theme, Teachers as Reader is chosen to help teachers themselves to develop as readers of good literature of various kinds. The KathaVana teacher forum has been designed as a 6-8 months long process, during which time a small group of pre-selected, committed teachers will come together to explore literature and its nuances through guided reading clubs. In the three day fest, various other activities such as bilingual round tables for teachers, children’s fest which will expose children to a rich variety of experiences, such as, story-telling, puppet-shows, read alouds, games around literature, and meet-the-author and meet-the-illustrator etc have been organised.