A creative and pragmatic education for children involves inculcating the habit of personal investigation. The act of personal investigation requires self-study to be followed by self-thinking and analysis. Self-study, otherwise referred to as reading at one’s own accord, requires reading habit which contributes to a better understanding of the child’s own experiences and it can be an exciting voyage to self-discovery. Reading habit is best formed at a young impressionable age in school, but once formed it can last one’s life time. Increasingly it is being recognised by educationists worldwide that the problems of low and slow academic achievement in school children is closely linked to the lack of reading habits. This habit has attained a form of consistency on the part of students toward understanding academic subjects. For an excellent performance, it is critical for students to develop good reading habit. Presently, due to the influence of the video games and mass media, children do not show as much interest in reading books, stories, newspapers and magazines. Many parents and teachers complain about students of young generation who do not develop proper reading habits among themselves.

Looking at the view above Child Development Project of CYSD had organised ‘Reading Weeks’ in 15 schools of Mayurbhanj & Keonjhar districts. Reading sessions were designed in three categories such as reading of story books that available in the school library, newspaper and text book. The associated teacher selects books from the school library and asks the children to choose one book for each group. Then each child of the group reads loudly a stanza and rotates it so that all the members of the group get a chance to read. After completion of a chapter they discuss on the theme and moral of the story. Newspaper reading session is suggested to accomplish just after the Morning Prayer. For this, children have to collect latest local, state, National or International news from the daily newspaper and read just after the prayer assembly. Sometimes teacher has to support children to collect news. For text book reading children are open to choose a subject and a topic in it and read loudly then discuss on it.

Gone are those days, but the idea still prevails and replicated; once upon a time Children’s Festival was called ‘JUAR’ followed by ‘Gaon Re JUAR’ and now Children’s Literary Festival (CFL) from School level to national level has been a good platform to equip the children for initiating child led advocacy with educationists, policy makers, teachers associations, writers, story-tellers, and publishers thus promoting quality education, joyful classroom learning and gender equality in children’s literature, stories and textbooks.

The Children’s Literary Festival was culminated in January 2020 with lot of activities undertaken at the state level. The three levels of activity in the State was further arranged in smaller activities at community school level, block level and district level. While the objective of school level activities was to promote reading habit amongst school children, the Block level activity was to familiarise/ sensitise/train children on issues of gender and how it impacts children’s lives on a daily basis, especially in schools and text books. At the same time, the State level CLF’s objective was to equip children to write stories poems, narratives that break the gender stereotypes and biases, to train children with skills to lead advocacy for quality in teaching and learning materials.

Reading sessions, loud reading sessions (Debate), word power game, creative story writing, creative art, song and dance were being the activities accomplished at school level. From the school level CLF process 2 best performing children each from 15 schools were selected to attend the block level/ district then Project level gender workshop and the audition process. The Child Development Project of Thakurmunda had organised this event at Padiabeda High School in November, 2019 where 10 best children were selected to join the State level CLF.

A three-day State level Children Literary Festival was held at Keonjhar during December 2019. A total of 30 children, including 10 each from 3 partner organisations of Plan India were participated meaningfully in this event. The children had lots of fun, joyful learning along with sharing their views/understandings on gender through creative writing, art, poem, loud reading/debate, song, dance, mono-actions, one act plays and puppetry. It was an effort to enhance their knowledge on gender, exploring inherent qualities & talent. Best ten performers were enlisted by different means of assessments to take part in the National level Children’s Literary Festival.  Out of 10 children represented CYSD in the State level event, 4 children got selected for participation in National level event. Children from 10 States participated in the National level Children’s Literary Festival organised by Plan India from 28-29 January 2020. The children represented CYSD performed well in the entire event.

At the national level event, in Painting competition, Badal Das from CYSD was selected as best performer and honoured with memento. His paintings were being printed in porcelain mug and photo-frames as token of gift to guests. Secondly, unlike other states, Odisha got two stalls to decorate – one for the main stall & other for the puppetry show. Stall was decorated very nicely with paintings, crafts, stories prepared by the children and material from Odia culture. So also in Puppetry, opening son, comic in camp fire and dance in cultural evening CYSD representatives came out with bright performance which was greatly appreciated by the Executive Director and other officials of Plan India.

The whole journey of CLF commencing from the community school level and culminating at the national level in Hyderabad was really an exciting voyage for some of the children like Badal Das.