Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

According to UNESCO, India's literacy rate ranks it 147 out of 177 countries. While India is home to 273 million illiterate people and 778 million literates (2011 census), over half of the "literates" cannot even read a newspaper headline. Studies have found that over 50% of rural children in Class 5 cannot read a Class 2 level text. Every year 27 million Indian children complete primary school as non-functional readers.

PlanetRead operates on the tenet that literacy skills must be constantly reinforced to improve throughout life. Same Language Subtitling (SLS) is the simple idea of subtitling audio-visual media content in the "same" language as the audio. What you hear is what you read, in perfect timing. SLS is deceptively simple for what it is achieving at a mass level in India, when implemented on Bollywood-style songs, already being telecast on TV, in all languages.

SLS is a globally recognized innovation that has been scientifically tested and proven for mass literacy in India with solid track record of over 15 years.

SLS is extremely cost-effective:

  • The annual cost of adding Same Language Subtitles to an existing film song-based TV programme like Rangoli is approximately 12.5 lakh Rupees or 20,000 USD.
  • This would give weekly 30 minutes of reading practice to around 100 million viewers, at a cost of about 1.6 paise per person per year.
  • Even on regional language programmes, the cost is usually less than 25 paise per person per year, depending on the viewership.
  • In other words, one US dollar gives weekly 30 minutes of reading practice to 5,000 people for one year.

Please write to us csr@planetread.org to know more about our programs and how you can support us.

Presently, our CSR partner in the SLS project is Oracle Giving

     

Oracle, through its CSR arm Oracle Giving, supports PlanetRead's Same Language Subtitling (SLS). With the help of Oracle's support, PlanetRead is adding SLS to 52 movies spread over a period of one year. Know more about Oracle Giving