Kenyans to co-author the world’s first collaborative digitally written book

For the first time Kenyans will be given a chance to co-author the world’s first collaborative digitally written book thanks to a new initiative by Story Moja under the patronage of Dr. Auma Obama and Digital Squad. Dubbed “Start a Library”, the initiative will use digital crowd sourcing to develop a book while at the same time raising money to go towards building 100 libraries for primary schools in Kenya.

According to the Founders, the initiative was started to address the huge literacy gap among Kenyan children using technology and is aimed at raising 30 million Kenyan shillings in 90 days to build 100 libraries.

Latest Uwezo report, there are more than 20,000 Kenyan primary schools without libraries translating to 98% of all primary schools. The impact of this has been that only 3 out of 10 Class 3 children can read a Class 2 level English Story while only 2 out of 10 children in the same class can read an English word.

For as little as 10 KES per word, anyone can participate and help to put a book in a child’s hands. It works like the composition/insha assignment and in this book a story has been started by several authors now encouraging Kenyans to get online to complete the story. At the end of campaign, all contributors will be acknowledged in the book as co-authors when the book is published in June 2016.

“By enhancing children’s ability to access storybooks, the kind that wets their appetite for reading, we hope that the libraries will empower over 10 million Kenyan children to increase their vocabulary, nurture creativity, improve critical thinking and reach their full potential”,  Story Moja Founder Muthoni Garland said.

This book writing process is open until end of December and the final printed book will be available in mid-2016..

To write be part of writing this story and making history, visit http://yetu.org/startalibrary/.