7-year-olds turn Sanskrit news readers

November 16, 2016 12:00 am | Updated December 02, 2016 03:44 pm IST - KOCHI:

This Children’s Day proved to be a red letter day for four second standard students from St. Mary’s Upper Primary School, Thevara.

Gokul R. Adwaith, P.D. Teena Sabu and Tinimol Tenni all turned news readers at a young age of seven thanks to Samprativartah (www.samprativartah.in), an online Sanskrit news portal promoted by Sanskrit teachers in Ernakulam, and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). “They took turns to read a schedule which lasted five to six minutes and in the process, they perhaps became the youngest news readers. They read it in a very admirable way,” said O.S. Harikumar, a Sanskrit teacher at the school and member of the SSA’s Sanskrit Research Group that founded the online portal.

Gokul was found to be the best among the lot and Mr. Harikumar is planning to train and make him capable of reading an entire schedule on his own. Sacred Heart College arranged the studio facility to record the news reading session which was then broadcast over the portal. Samprativartah had launched the second phase of its initiative aimed at creating a talent pool of Sanskrit newsreaders among schoolchildren on World Sanskrit Day this September.

The training initiative was initially launched on June 1 with the webcast of bulletins read by upper primary students trained in news reading. The bulletins have been webcast on Wednesdays since then. The second phase marked the launch of Sanskrit news reading by lower primary students. They joined 20-odd upper primary students who had already read the news.

Nine students even got a rare opportunity to prove their news reading skills in Sanskrit at a programme broadcast by All India Radio (AIR) in May. The opportunity came their way thanks to the three-day training camp in Sanskrit news reading for schoolchildren organised by Samprativartah and the SSA during April.

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