Saide’s African Storybook Initiative has developed an amazing App – the Maker App – on which adults and children can create, publish and share their own stories. All you need is a smart phone or digital tablet. Once downloaded, the App can be used offline, making it suitable for use in environments where connectivity and electricity supply may be constrained. The Maker App is available free from Google Play and the Apple App Store. With a bit of practice, the Maker App is a quick and easy way to create an illustrated storybook using a mobile phone or tablet. To illustrate a story, you can choose images either by photographing something, drawing something and then photographing it, or uploading an image from the easily accessible databank.

ASb was delighted last month to hear that the Story Maker App was selected as one of five finalists for the 2021, UK based Tech4Good Awards in the education category.

Dorcas Wepukhulu, ASb’s East and West African Partner Development Coordinator, reports on how children and adults in remote rural areas of Kenya, Nigeria and Benin have used the App to create and publish stories in the languages of their choice.

During her first visit, earlier this year, to the Kongoni Community Library in Kakamega County, a rural area in the west of Kenya, Dorcas introduced the ASb website and the Maker App to a small group of adults and children. The four children in the group loved the App and were excited to start creating their own stories. One of the boys, Ezekiel Wafula, was so eager to see his story published, that he returned to the library after school hours to complete it. You can read Ezekiel’s story, Hard work pays, here.

Dorcas also reports on how, in Kenya, ordinary people, who have stories to tell, but who have not had the opportunity to share them, can also now do so using the Maker App. One such person is Njeri Wachira who has published some of her nature stories on the ASb Site, an example of which isthe story about the Thompsons Falls in Kenya which you can read here.

In Nigeria, Terkule Aorabee, one of ASb’s Nigerian Champions, has been working closely with ATLAV (Accelerating Tiv Language Among the Vulnerable), an organisation in Benue State that supports the development of literacy among children and adults in the Internally Displaced Persons’ camps whose schooling is interrupted because of displacement. Tiv is one of the major languages spoken across five North Central Nigerian states and in parts of Cameroon.

To celebrate International Literacy Day in September last year, Terkule collaborated with his young son to create and publish two short stories. The aim was to support young children reading for pleasure in the Tiv language. The two books published on the ASb website are Atii ta Aji (level 1) and Atii ta Aji, (level 2). Both have the same basic storyline, but are pitched at two different reading levels so that the books are accessible to very early readers as well as to children that have a little more reading experience. The level two book has longer sentences and more complex vocabulary.

In March this year, Terkule, working with, organized a story making workshop in Benue State introducing the Maker App to a group of primary school teachers, two lecturers from Katsina Federal College of Education, two Tiv Cultural Organisation leaders, and one literacy NGO representative. The excitement of everyone involved about using the App to learn to create stories, is captured by one participant commenting that, “This is the best experience I have gotten in this workshop”.

Since last year, the Trois Soeurs Education Fund (TSEF), a grassroots organisation based in Cotonou, Benin, has also started creating and publishing storybooks for children in two local, marginalised languages, Goungbe and Fongbe. TSEF’s stated mission is, “… to strengthen economic empowerment for individuals in the lowest economic quintile by providing specialised tutoring and literacy programmes.” To date, TSEF has published two books and are currently in the process of creating more titles. 

         

To support the story making and publishing process, the ASb team have put together a Guide comprising a collection of tried and tested methods used to create storybooks with children for children. These include methods for creating storybooks on paper as well as for creating stories digitally on a tablet or mobile phone, using the African Storybook Maker App.

To promote early grade reading and literacy, the Guide offers support to teachers by providing strategies for encouraging the integration of storytelling, reading and writing into literacy lessons.