The Madhya Pradesh capital is going to have the South Asia’s first children’s newspaper in Braille.
The Peace Gong, a children’s newspaper which works through the length and breadth of the country and also abroad, will be launching its Braille issue on Saturday at Arushi NGO which works for physically and mentally challenged children.
The Peace Gong reaches out to children across the world. In India, it has child reporters right from Kargil in Jammu and Kashmir to Imphal in Manipur; Kerala to Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.
It is a media literacy initiative of the Rabindranath Tagore Foundation, New Delhi.
“The aim of the Peace Gong is to bring together children from diverse communities and backgrounds. It is to provide a platform to children with disability that we are launching the Braille edition. A major highlight of this edition is many general students learned Braille and worked with visually challenged young reporters. The edition is being brought out in association with Arushi. The Peace Gong is the first Braille children’s newspaper in the country and also the first in South Asia,” said Kanupriya Gupta, editor of Peace Gong.
“The motive of the newspaper is to involve children all through the country and get them to express their views about the things going on around in the world. Realising that there is a vital part of the society which is unable to voice their emotions in some way, the team decided to involve children with disabilities in this initiative to make world a better place to live,” said Kanupriya.
{{/usCountry}}“The motive of the newspaper is to involve children all through the country and get them to express their views about the things going on around in the world. Realising that there is a vital part of the society which is unable to voice their emotions in some way, the team decided to involve children with disabilities in this initiative to make world a better place to live,” said Kanupriya.
{{/usCountry}}“The most inspiring fact about them (child reporters) is that they like to have an interactive session where they feel free to give their views and ask questions. They feel empowered and gain confidence that they are equal to any child,” said Anil Mudgal, director of Arushi.
Taking out a newspaper is no ‘child’s play’. Vedabhyas Kundu, coordinator of Rabindranath Tagore Foundation said, “While taking the media training program one problem that we faced was that children’s languages were not that developed, both in Hindi and English.”