Scott Norton '08 spent last summer in India filming a documentary promoting Planet Read and BookBox.com, two companies that take different approaches to raising literacy rates.
The for-profit BookBox.com creates low-cost animations of children's stories designed to help kids learn to read. Planet Read, the company Norton worked for primarily, is a nonprofit social enterprise that executes a low-cost plan to raise literacy. The company has so far focused its work mainly in India but plans to expand to the rest of the world.
Norton, an economics concentrator, started working with Planet Read and BookBox while taking EN 193 Sec. 10: "Social Entrepreneurship," which was then taught by Professor Emeritus of Engineering Barrett Hazeltine. The course discusses social enterprises, or organizations that place at least as much emphasis on the benefits of their work as the profits they might bring in.
Norton said he became enthusiastic about the efforts of Brij Kothari, who founded Planet Read and BookBox, while taking EN 193. For the course's final project, Norton worked with Ari Rockland-Miller '08, collecting data on the effect of a BookBox experiment in Providence. They ultimately created a business plan for expanding to the entire United States.
"(The project) was well-received ... so (Kothari) asked me if I could go to India and do the same thing for Planet Read," Norton said.
Norton was told to produce qualitative research and video documentation on how Planet Read's work is received in rural India.
Given a professional-quality digital camera and a laptop to edit on, Norton traveled to India, where he toured the country, filming rural villages and conducting numerous interviews. He talked to a variety of people, including young village girls, Bollywood stars and a former chief executive officer of one of India's largest broadcasting corporations.
Kothari gave a presentation Sept. 19 describing his companies' efforts to this semester's EN 193 class, which is being taught by Christopher Bull, senior research engineer.
India has a literacy rate of 65.4 percent as of the 2001 national census, but about half of that rate represents people who know the alphabet but have only very basic reading skills, Kothari said. These people, who Kothari terms "early-literates," cannot functionally read.
Kothari added that people in India have few ways to improve on whatever reading skills they have. Books, magazines and printed materials are hard to find in rural India, where most "early-literates" live.
Planet Read provides SLS, or "Same-Language-Subtitling," developed at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Planet Read provides subtitles for popular Bollywood films - or Indian film industry productions - which are then broadcast on national television throughout the country, allowing people to read along with their favorite songs.
Bollywood musical films comprise one of the major forms of communication and mass media in the country. Television sets in India are increasing in number - there were virtually no sets in 1975, while in 2006 there were 100 sets per every 1,000 people. Over 500 million people watch television in India regularly, and Bollywood, which creates over 1,000 films per year, provides the bulk of broadcast material.
"One dollar to Planet Read gives 10,000 people reading practice for an entire year," Norton said.
Planet Read also does similar work with traditional and folk music, providing subtitles for songs and playing them over still photos of Indian life.
Part of Norton's respon-sibility was to pass on his multimedia knowledge to Planet Read so the company could continue similar work on its own after Norton left. To this end, Norton worked with two Planet Read employees, Nikhil and Pappu, who acted as his guides, partners and students.
The evidence Norton collected and the documentary he produced showed that Planet Read indeed has a positive effect on literacy in India. Children who had dropped out of school but were exposed to Planet Read materials reached literacy levels roughly on par with that of children who had stayed in the education system before Planet Read came to the country, according to Kothari.
Also, other literacy projects in India cost much more to implement than Planet Read does, which has an annual per person cost of 0.002 cents.
The documentary is to be used to expose policymakers in India and in other areas with low literacy rates - like Pakistan and Bangladesh - to Planet Read. The documentary is also designed to help Planet Read win donations from established corporations.
"It was essentially the experience of my life," Norton said. "My life is divided into two parts - before India and after India. ...it's helping people, but on a much more basic level, providing value for people."
