Could you talk about your future plans?
I work with NGOs and women entrepreneurs. I help women to start and manage their brands. I train on publicity, building the brand story and give advice on growing the brand. I conduct workshops on entrepreneurship.
To bring all this work under one roof, I am starting an NGO – Enlit Foundation for Art and Education. The registration is in process. Kathashtakam Global Storytellers Collective – our non profit initiative will be operating under the Enlit Foundation.
Could you talk about your models of functioning?
Enlit Kids is a proprietorship. My husband Amol Barbare is the Co-founder and handles the school consultancy.
Kathashtakam is a non profit initiative. Enlit Foundation for Education and Art will be a social enterprise.
Could you talk about how you promote regional language storytelling?
Most of the content for storytelling is in English. There are so many languages in India. Yet, most of the content is in English. Adults and children both benefit from listening to stories in regional languages. I have been reading Marathi novels. I was educated in Marathi till the 10th standard. When you talk in your mother tongue, it is a totally different experience. English is the language of the world, but we need to encourage and advocate our own regional languages. In Kathashtakam, we promote regional language storytelling and writing. We are doing multiple language storytelling – for instance in the Chennai Storytelling Festival we narrated in Tamil. Hindi, Gujrati and Marathi. I try to focus on regional languages.
Could you talk about the work you are doing in schools?
I work with schools, NGOs, CSR funded schools, tribal schools – we partner with them to create educational resources. We curate library books, teaching resources etc. We create lesson plans to teach through stories. We work with Tribal schools and different schools. For example, we worked with a school for children of commercial sex workers, a school in Pune – underprivileged in every sense of the word. The principal was very appreciative. They never had these kind of resources for these children. This is where impact is being created.
Could you talk about your focus on community building?
I am a part of many business platforms. There are a lot of business platforms for IT, architecture, food, fashion etc. But when it comes to storytelling and literature – it is not a high revenue business. And when it comes to children’s literature, the space is quite narrow and small.
The ecosystem needs to be built and we are building it for Kid lit professionals, storytellers and educators. We need to focus on paid models.
What has been your dream in this space?
Registering the NGO has been my dream. Now we have started the registration process for the NGO. We have a global community – in UK, US, Europe and India.
Story Practices 