Katha's approach to community participation and activism revolves around educating and empowering children, construed as crucial in helping their communities get out of economic poverty. Katha works with diverse communities - at the "literacy as well as the literary grassroots." Quality education for children and a programme that hones reading ability in children is at the core of Katha's work.

Katha's early childhood programme focuses not just on building cognitive and motor skills, but also on a larger curriculum for life. The Kathawadi (nursery), located in 50 slum clusters, is a community-based, family-focused, comprehensive, pre-kindergarten programme designed to help children between 18 and 36 months of age and their families who are in poverty. The preschool for children aged 3-8 years ("Jhunjhunwadi") is divided into two stages: lower kindergarten (LKG) and upper kindergarten (UKG). The Katha Preschool Curriculum, Katha Baltaleem, helps teach children that reading well and for fun goes hand-in-hand with being happy, well-adjusted, and ethical. The curriculum combines traditional Indian practices with new knowledge on life-related topics, to the end of shaping pupils into responsive, responsible, and happy members of society. Teaching/learning materials seek to make learning joyful, relevant, and creative, increasing lifelong learning skills/habits in children. Through learning, Katha aims to create students and teachers who know their rights and responsibilities and who join hands to make the system work for the good of all. "We see early childhood education as a space which promotes not just democratic learning but learning for democracy." The preschool leads to grade 1 - either in a Katha Community School ("Katha Vaatika") or in government/private schools.

Katha's child-in-community educational system brings the community into classrooms, encouraging students to work cooperatively so as to become contributing members of their families and communities and responsible, responsive citizens. Students learn traditional and non-traditional subjects like genetics and nanotechnology, often through what is relevant to their present and future lives. Katha believes that if children are to be happy in school, they need to be self-propelled drivers who can make sense of their lives so that their families and communities can also benefit. The Katha learning system protects student performance through vigilant community participation; in return, the students train the adults in computer skills and help them increase family earnings. In this way, the education model works with and through Katha students to push the economic resurgence of the community as well as their own upward mobility. This forms part of the school curriculum.

Teacher training is offered through Kalpana Vilasam, the centre for creativity in education that was set up in 1990. Consisting of a 160 hour annual training and regular twice-a-month faculty club meetings, this training supports sound and creative classroom ideas on subject areas like gender, worked sensitively into and in relation to formal, curricular teaching. Aspiring teachers learn how to stimulate cognitive development through poems and stories that focus, for example, on "loka samastha sukino bavanthu" (the well-being of all lifeforms on earth). Teachers are assisted in making teaching/learning materials and classroom lesson plans, as well as in using computers to explore their interests and developments in their fields. Junior teachers learn how to use Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and the internet, while many senior teachers learn how to use Flash and PageMaker.

Research feedback is at the foundation of Katha's community schools. Katha's Working Group on Early Childhood Learning was formed with a focus on what and how children read and learn and how it is possible to enhance their chances of staying in education at least until high school. With the help of more than 100 volunteers and storytellers, Katha preschools take forward research into action. Katha's research projects go back to 1989, when the organisation first field-tested their magazine for children from non-literate families, called "Tamasha!". This process was the basis of Katha's learning on how children read and how they remember what they had read. They found, for instance, that children were not comfortable with the comic format, nor could they perceive on their own how to read a two-column text. They jumped from line 1 of first column to line 1 of second column, which led them to feel frustrated and thus turned off by reading. Subsequently, with funding from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Katha carried out a larger survey on "print communication and the rural child" in Rajasthan and Bihar - finding that children remembered stories for reasons different from those their teachers had advanced. For instance, students all remembered the name "Tobakacchi", which teachers said should not have been used, for it was a difficult word for children.

This study was followed in 1994-5 by a study of the oral traditions in 6 languages: Bangla, Bhojpuri, Chattisgarhi, Mythili, Tamil, and Telugu. The project, Kathalok, collected stories, riddles, and songs from each of these languages for use in adult literacy and in the education of children. This inspired the idea of culture-linking at Katha, and brought home the importance of exposing children to India's rich linguistic and storytelling diversity. From 1996 to 2004, with Ford Foundation support, Katha undertook studies in curriculum development, with a focus on story in the many languages of India.

From 2008 to 2010, the research unit at Katha is focusing on early childhood education and its impact on the performance, retention, and attendance of students coming from underserved communities of Delhi. Funded by the Bernard van Leer Foundation, the study will track students in the Katha Community Schools, analysing their performance vis-a-vis that of students who have not attended a quality preschool. The research team will also support teacher education through these 3 years.

Knowing that Delhi's streetchildren will not be able to come to school, let alone pay for what they learn, Katha, through its School on Wheels programme, takes learning to them. Katha Khazana is Katha's field project in the Govindpuri slums. The School on Wheels, with its brightly painted van, carries the Tamasha Roadshow (TRS) to children. It is filled with what is meant to be fun learning material based on a chubby mascot Tamasha! and her friends. The roadshow is designed to attract children to a learning environment through theatre, songs, dance, puppetry, and computers. The School on Wheels programme gives information on life issues like sustainable health and environment, education, rights, and career options. The aim is to retain the maximum number of children in non-formal education to begin with, and then help them acquire a graduation certificate as well as vocational skills for better livelihood options.

In addition, Katha's educational outreach programme supports Satellite Schools run by the community in slum clusters. Katha provides these schools with creative teaching-learning material and guides them through the process of making education attractive and relevant.

Katha's Summer Camp ("Aatish") is held in spaces outside the Katha School campus in one of the largest slums in Delhi. It is a rigorous training programme for 100 students of Katha Public School and the Katha School of Entrepreneurship who are graduating from Grades 10 and 12. The objective is to train students in entrepreneurial, leadership, and learning skills. They participate in personality development workshops and mock interviews and are trained in writing resumes. The graduating students are groomed for the job mela (fair) scheduled in the first week of July on the school campus.

The Reading Campaign is designed to bring children ages 2-8 into sustained reading. Katha produces and brings into children's lives what they intend to be colourful and thought-provoking books; Katha has published over a hundred books, including novels, short stories collections, poetry, screenplays, biographies, and travel literature. An associated online "Kidzzone" includes reading activities designed to inject learning with fun. The Indian Reading League (IRL) covers 4 zones of Delhi, with 13 franchisees and 13 leagues in each zone. With funding from the Government of Delhi, Katha is working with 2.4 million children, 60,000 teachers, and 3,000 librarians to enhance the reading skills of those aged 5-17. The Katha Reading Mentors Alliance (KARMA) brings the neighbourhood into Katha's community schools in various ways. Storytellers Unlimited brings practitioners from the visual, plastic, and performance arts into the community schools.

Katha's story centre reflects the centrality of storytelling to Katha's thinking, as it is seen as a methodology for linking people through creative impulses for a common good. In India, 410 different languages are spoken, not to mention the hundreds of dialects; this reality explains Katha's focus on fostering and actively developing interest and skills in languages. Katha believes that stories in translation help youth develop a greater awareness and understanding of other cultures and perspectives, which is vital for a pluralistic, multilingual society like India's. Katha's language activism revolves around Kathavilasam, the story research and resource centre that seeks to bring quality fiction to a wider readership through translations. Katha's publishing programme spans 21 Indian languages. "We see translation as one kind of activism to change and unite the world. Translation and culture, for us, are not limited to one aspect of life, but are catalysts for social inclusion and development, through our various stories and story-related events. And we are always looking for fellow activists to join us in our endeavour."

To foster involvement, the Katha Translation for Equity Network (KTEN) addresses the problem of equity in access to knowledge and education for India's underprivileged children studying in secondary and post-secondary educational institutions, and seeks to empower them with the tools and skills necessary for them to realise their true potential. It pledges to help them take full advantage of the increased job opportunities of a knowledge-based globalising economy. KTEN works to increase their knowledge base through open access to essays/texts translated into the language each student is comfortable in. KTEN works to improve their English reading, writing, and comprehension skills to enable competent and creative expression and better communication. To achieve these ends, Katha catalyses mass collaboration through the internet, and among teachers, students, and resource persons across India.

The Katha Centre for Film Studies (KCFS) organises film screenings and festivals, along with orientation courses in ways of looking at cinema, and intensive scriptwriting and film appreciation workshops. "What we wish to do is to make the language of world cinema, and the creative expression inherent in it, available in the larger context of questions of culture, art and critical understanding, without giving up on the pleasures of watching films." KCFS has organised regular film festivals and symposia for various colleges and academic institutions in Mumbai, showcasing films from world cinema to sensitise youth on human rights, justice, gender, and other contemporary issues through the medium of cinema, while also aiming to build a wider, more nuanced perception of film art through intense and rigorous discussions following screenings. KCFS also collaborated with The Graduate School of Design at Harvard University (Boston, Massachusetts, United States) as a resource centre for a studio called "Maximum Mumbai, Minimum Mumbai", whereby it provided documentary films designed to sensitise students to the context of Mumbai.

Children, Youth, Education, Economic Development, Citizenship.

Katha works with children living in 72 slum and street communities across Delhi, and in the tribal villages of Arunachal Pradesh. Katha claims to have provided 50,000 children with quality schooling in the last decade, which led them to college and well paying jobs. A 2008 sampling of salaries showed that 45 Katha alumni earn a total of Indian Rs 5.52 million (their family incomes were Rs 600-80/month in 1990, according to a government survey). Katha's team of 160, along with 500-plus volunteers, proactively brings enhanced reading to children living in slums.