Brij Kothari: Literacy

Brij Kothari: Literacy

Brij Kothari is the founder of PlanetRead, a not-for-profit organization that pioneered the concept of “Same-Language Subtitling” to promote mass literacy. Kothari and his team partner with TV stations and media distributors to burn subtitles onto movies and music videos, thus making reading more accessible to India’s rural populations. Kothari learned the impact of illiteracy on a community while performing his doctoral research at Cornell University. “The two years I spent in Ecuador as a researcher brought me face-to face with the literacy problem in India.” Kothari said. “We were documenting the knowledge of the indigenous people and hit along huge literacy barrier. We found that the knowledge was being passed down poorly through an oral tradition.” Kothari has demonstrated that the simple solution of subtitling songs and Bollywood films massively improves literacy and promotes reading across India. Kothari is also CEO of BookBox Inc. producing children’s animated stories in more than 25 languages.

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Read more: http://www.planetread.org/team