Madhuri Pai, Co-Founder of Turning Pages, spoke at our most recent Senior Leaders’ Breakfast, adding her insight to a conversation around diversity and inclusion in the corporate film and events industries. Find out about Turning Pages, and the brilliant work they do below!
Turning Pages is a social enterprise set up in 2020 with the vision of bringing the benefits of strong and joyful reading habits to under-served children in India. Research by the UK Department of Education makes it crystal clear that reading for pleasure is the single biggest predictor of success at school. Even when a child is hampered by poor schooling or a difficult situation at home, the ability and desire to read for pleasure can help in a big way. Children who read, do well across school, even in Maths and Science (hence, not just text heavy subjects)
The approach at Turning Pages is to bring about systemic change by working on transforming the “whole school reading culture” with a five pronged approach that covers all key elements of the child’s ecosystem at school – Teachers, Headteacher, Reading Spaces, Events and storybook focused sessions. Currently we work with 1450 children and 85 teachers in 5 schools (in Western India). We have a partnership with U-Chicago and get a steady flow of high quality interns from there.
We use the best in children’s literature, combined with our immersive activities/discussions around each book to drive a bond of love between children and books. Our discussions are designed to sharpen critical thinking and creating a safe space for self expression and confident speech. We believe that this is the best way to empower children to grow their learning and jump over some of the hoops poor schooling puts in their way.
Bringing teachers on-board with “hearts and minds” is a crucial part of the programme. No change can happen in reading culture at schools if teachers don’t experience the joy themselves and don’t have the basic understanding of children’s story books to create enthusiasm around reading in their classes. Our programme is designed to deliver this too.
If this sparks any interest and you want to support us in any manner that suits you best, please write to Madhuri at mpai9872@gmail.com