Deepa Balsavar writes and illustrates books for children. She is also a storyteller and has performed at children’s festivals and literary events around the country. For over 25 years she has been involved in developing, writing and illustrating material for schools, government institutions and independent organizations on education, adolescent health, sexuality and child rights. Deepa is the author / illustrator of over 25 books for young children. Her various storybooks have been published by Tulika Publishers, Eklavya Publications, Pratham Books, Macmillan and Tata Donelly. Deepa’s bilingual picture book ‘The Seed’ was selected as one of the outstanding International books of the year 2006 by White Raven Children’s Library, Germany. It has also been recommended by the CBSE board for all school libraries. Her book ‘The Lonely King and Queen’ on adoption, apart from being available in eight regional Indian languages, has also been translated into Swedish. She conducts workshops for students, teachers and professionals on creative writing and illustration, on encouraging thinking and creativity in the classroom and on creating low-cost visual material. Among other credits, Deepa develops scripts for the SAARC region and trains writers in Bangladesh for UNICEF’s animated series on the girl child – Meena; she has been a core member of the Avehi-Abacus Project that has developed Sangati a supplementary foundation programme, used in all the upper primary schools of the BMC in Mumbai; she has illustrated two of the new NCERT textbooks on Environment studies; illustrated math and language learning material for Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh state educational programmes and developed advocacy material for a programme on adolescent sexuality for Johns Hopkins University.
Delegate | 2018