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There are multiple different narrative modes in the Indian tradition with stories told mainly through performances and the storyteller often seen as a teacher. Education in India often has to cater to diverse needs, respond to extreme challenges resulting – among others – from multiplicity of languages and cultures and lack of students’ motivation, which are present in many other countries. I observed the endeavours of a non-profit organisation Katha in its real environment in New Delhi. I gathered the data on Katha’s activities using mostly narrative inquiry focusing on Katha’s specific categories which in turn revealed Katha’s narrative approach – the most important initiatives are underpinned by the stories and the desire to allow children to take joy from reading them. I describe some of the similarities I observed in other educational projects in Brazil and Colombia in order to show their interconnectedness, the integration of the teaching and learning processes with stories, the holism of the endeavours, where all the activities are governed by the common goal of relevancy to the lives of the children and emotions forming an essential part of classroom activities. The observations made me realise that besides the teacher training and curriculum curation it was the engagement of the community that was the core of the success of Katha’s activities enabled by the stories and storytelling.

Poverty as a Factor Forcing Positive Innovations in Education. Presentation of Innovative Educational Projects from the Slums of Brazil and India Jolanta Gałecka proposes a slightly different view on poverty– as a limiting factor for the circumstances related to the compulsory nature of education, taken for granted. Giving some examples of innovative educational projects from her own experience, she describes in detail one of the most interesting projects in an Indian slum that she had the opportunity to observe. In this project, over 10 million children had the opportunity to experience the joy of reading. They were often children who did not go to school only a few months ago. In environments where families cannot afford to 'waste' a few hours a day at school– which is exactly how their parents often perceive this time, going to school is not always the norm. During the 6 or 8 hours that would be spent in school, you can earn a few cents, which is often more important than a boring and "who-knows-what-for" school education. In such conditions, the assumptions, indisputable in the developed countries, such as compulsory education, universal usefulness or the necessity of education, and the general acceptance of the obviousness of school, disappear. If someone wants to have children go to school, he or she has to look at school from a completely different perspective– look at the children, their needs and the environment from which they come. As a result, some projects are being created that are also worth imitating in European schools. One of them is the pedagogical approach of Geeta Dharmarajan, the founder of the Katha organization, invented over 30 years ago and developed in the student community and in cooperation with it. Katha has been teaching children the joy of reading, the joy of development and the joy of being in school for 33 years. The joy of reading, or rather the will to provide it to all the children in India, is a consistently implemented keynote of all activities carried out by Geeta. The real key to success, however, was not to provide books (Katha has already published over 300 different titles), but to understand the needs of local communities and work closely with them. Keywords