Team Cafe
Konkani Bhasha Mandal (KBM), an organisation that works
towards the development of Konkani in Goa, has been doing so through this
interesting initiative that first materialised in 2001. Armed with an objective
of giving vent to the various expressions of children in their mother tongue
Konkani, and to introduce them to children’s literature in their mother tongue,
KBM has been organising its annual storytelling competition for kids, titled,
Shenai Goembab Kathamal. This year, the preliminaries of the competition will
be held on August 31, 2015 and the finals will be held on September 6 at
Margao.
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Chetan Acharya, President of KBM, says, “It is important to
inculcate the habit of reading in children at a young age. Apart from doing
that, the competition also serves as a medium to build confidence amongst
children. Along with encouraging them to write new stories and thereby create
new writers, the event promotes the library culture amongst children. I think
there cannot be a better platform to promote the various dialects of Konkani
language and to tap young talents than this competition.” Apart from the
competition, KBM also exhibits several books and reading materials targeted
towards children and teachers.
The competition is held in three groups – standard first to
fourth, fifth to seventh and eighth to tenth. Invitations are sent to all the
schools across Goa as per the list of educational institutes provided by the
Department of Education, which includes all the government, aided and unaided
schools in Goa. Shirish Naik, coordinator of the competition, says, “Overall
about 2000 schools are sent invites. We request the schools to conduct
competitions in their schools and each school is allowed to send two
participants in each group for the preliminaries held in each centre.”
Prachi Prabhavalkar, co-coordinator of the competition,
says, “We do not give topics or themes for the stories as we believe in the
freedom of the participant and each participant thus comes out with varied
subjects for their stories. However, each group has a time limit. (First to
fourth – 3-5 minutes, fifth to seventh – 4-6 minutes and eighth to tenth – 4-7
minutes). We encourage the participants to tell stories in the different
dialects of Konkani used in various parts of Goa.”
Until a few years ago, the preliminaries for the competition
were being held in few talukas during the first few years. But as years passed
by, the competition started receiving immense response and slowly it began to
spread to all talukas. Starting this year, an additional centre is being added:
Ponda taluka, thereby taking the total number of centres to 15. Furthermore,
starting this year, the organisers have also planned a workshop for teachers in
the primary section. The workshop is aimed at guiding the teachers on the
various aspects of the competition so that they can prepare the students in the
best manner. While the workshop in Panjim was held on August 7, Margao will
have the workshop at Ravindra Bhavan today, August 8.
