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How stories from sleepy Nandurbar reached Stanford

A Stanford University research project that invited the stories, has declared its winners. Fergusson College student Aishwarya Patil will translate the works for global audience

Devidas Deshpande

Posted On Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 11:50:36 PM

Aishwarya Patil from Fergusson college

The stories of the lives of children from the dark corners of Maharashtra will not be lost in translation as they hit the global market, thanks to a Class XI girl from Fergusson College. Aishwarya Patil has been given the important task of translating their stories into English.

These stories that were penned by children through an initiative by local company SMS One along with Stanford University will be printed and distributed globally. After a project in Africa, Dr Paul Kim, chief technology officer for Stanford University School of Education and the director of Seeds of Empowerment with his team are conducting a research on programmable open mobile internet.

His team invited children aged between 10 and 15 from 13 different communities across Maharashtra to write stories. SMS One has an extensive network of local representatives connected through mobile SMSes.

The company used SMS as means of inviting the stories. The project received a huge response with 1,620 entries.

These were screened by national award-winning teacher Dilip Phaltankar with his staff and Dr Padmashree Patil. After sorting through the entries, three winners were selected.

These winning entries will be translated to English and distributed globally through Amazon.com. The job has been entrusted to Aishwarya Patil, who is the daughter of Dr Padmashree Patil.

She told Pune Mirror, “When the competition was over and there was talk of translating these stories into English, giving the work to some experienced person was being discussed.

It was then that I volunteered. I thought I could relate to the stories better as I am almost in the same age group. An older person would have found it difficult to relate to their writing.”

Aishwarya’s hobbies included reading and writing. “Since my mother tongue is Marathi and I have been educated in English, I am fluent in both languages. This has really helped me in my task.

The process of translation is in progress now. Since the Christmas holidays are coming up, I hope I can finish off the process early,” she added.

According to Ravi Ghate, director, SMSONE, “What we wanted to show the western world was that even after utilising technology, it is human interaction that ultimately makes a difference. This was demonstrated with the number of entries we received when we added this element while inviting stories.”

The three winners of this competition have recently been declared with a girl from Nandurbar district standing first. The second spot went to a girl from Kolhapur and the third to one from Beed. The winners will get cash prizes of $100, $75 and $50 respectively.

Dilip Phaltankar, a national award-winning teacher, screened the 1,620 entries. He said, “All the entries are really nice and a must read.

They give a real feeling of the environ in rural parts of Maharashtra. For example, the entry that won the first prize is woven around the death of the writer’s (a Class IV student) mother and the void she feels without her.”

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