Initiative: 300m Challenge!
Organization: Katha India
Country: India
Facebook: @kathaindia
Twitter: @KathaIndia
Website: www.katha.org

Katha’s 300 Million Challenge is an initiative to ensure all 300 million children enrolled in schools in India are drawn to education by making learning fun through story pedagogy. The organisation has successfully leveraged its social media presence to bring in thousands of volunteers to introduce 5-10 year olds to reading through colourful books and community libraries and digital interventions. These community-owned libraries, too, have been established through crowd funding efforts that helped Katha raise over 2 lakh rupees.

The #300mChallenge initiatives uses technology as a lever to create an alliance of corporates, non-profits, schools, organisations and colleges that works together to make each child read. Through its social media-driven digital marketing, Katha was able to successfully host book donation drives across Delhi where it collected more than 30,000 books for children’s community owned and operated libraries. Further, it used its social media presence to educate audiences about the importance of reading. It was also able to engage a pool of volunteers through its active social media presence.