<p class="title">A Bengaluru-based non-profit on Wednesday launched a microsite offering free streaming of traditional lullabies in 14 Indian languages. The collection is sourced from mothers, grandmothers, and anganwadi workers, recorded in their voices, and comes with animated videos, same-language subtitles, and transliterations.</p>.<p class="title">Visitors to the microsite can record lullabies they know and email the recordings to the team, which will be later vetted. Currently, five lullabies are live on the platform, in Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Assamese, and Bengali. In the coming months, the platform will upload lullabies in languages like Telugu, Chhattisgarhi, Pahadi, Magahi, Assamese, and Gaddi. Among them will be two Kannada lullabies: ‘Jo jo laali naa haduve, Chinna ninna muddaduve’ and ‘Baana daariyalli surya jaari hoda, chandra mele banda’. These songs describe night-time and are meant to soothe and lull infants to sleep.</p>.<p class="title">The project, called First Songs, aims to harness the power of lullabies to support early language acquisition, emotional bonding, and literacy. “Singing lullabies fosters an ‘abundance mindset’ in caregivers, helping them realise they already have valuable resources for their child’s development,” says Varun Naik, one of the project leads. Research shows that infants learn language by recognising rhythm and tone before individual words or sounds, he adds.</p>.<p class="title">First Songs is an initiative of Bengaluru’s EkStep Foundation, launched under their ‘Bachpan Manao’ programme. The project is done in collaboration with Delhi-based Pratham Education Foundation, and Puducherry’s Billion Readers (BIRD).<br />Moving forward, the team plans to run campaigns to popularise their lullaby repository among mothers and caregivers of preschool and anganwadi children. </p>.<p class="title"><span class="italic"><em>Visit firstsongs.billionreaders.org</em></span></p>
<p class="title">A Bengaluru-based non-profit on Wednesday launched a microsite offering free streaming of traditional lullabies in 14 Indian languages. The collection is sourced from mothers, grandmothers, and anganwadi workers, recorded in their voices, and comes with animated videos, same-language subtitles, and transliterations.</p>.<p class="title">Visitors to the microsite can record lullabies they know and email the recordings to the team, which will be later vetted. Currently, five lullabies are live on the platform, in Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Assamese, and Bengali. In the coming months, the platform will upload lullabies in languages like Telugu, Chhattisgarhi, Pahadi, Magahi, Assamese, and Gaddi. Among them will be two Kannada lullabies: ‘Jo jo laali naa haduve, Chinna ninna muddaduve’ and ‘Baana daariyalli surya jaari hoda, chandra mele banda’. These songs describe night-time and are meant to soothe and lull infants to sleep.</p>.<p class="title">The project, called First Songs, aims to harness the power of lullabies to support early language acquisition, emotional bonding, and literacy. “Singing lullabies fosters an ‘abundance mindset’ in caregivers, helping them realise they already have valuable resources for their child’s development,” says Varun Naik, one of the project leads. Research shows that infants learn language by recognising rhythm and tone before individual words or sounds, he adds.</p>.<p class="title">First Songs is an initiative of Bengaluru’s EkStep Foundation, launched under their ‘Bachpan Manao’ programme. The project is done in collaboration with Delhi-based Pratham Education Foundation, and Puducherry’s Billion Readers (BIRD).<br />Moving forward, the team plans to run campaigns to popularise their lullaby repository among mothers and caregivers of preschool and anganwadi children. </p>.<p class="title"><span class="italic"><em>Visit firstsongs.billionreaders.org</em></span></p>