That first story you penned left your parents gushing over you, the story which you wrote but never shared with any other - children, here is a chance for you to bring out the writer within you.

City-based social enterprise Kahaanighar, founded by painter Meenakshi Jha Banerjee and her husband Rony Banerjee, is organising a storytelling Olympiad - Kahaanibaaz - in which children will have a chance to share their own written stories. The 50 best selected stories would be given a shape of a book by the organisation while the writers of the 50 best stories would also win hampers.

Kahaanighar has already received 50 entries so far since it started taking stories from August 20.

Apart from children in the state, kids from outside, including Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Uttar Pradesh and even Dubai have sent their stories to the organisation.

'There would be a panel of experts to select the 50 best stories, including noted writer and Padma Shri recipient Usha Kiran Khan, social activists Nivedita Shakeel, Anish Ankur, RJ Neelesh Mishra among others. Children between the ages of 7 and 15 years can submit their stories to us through email ( kahaanighar.patna@gmail.com) before September 20. Kids have to write stories within 1,500 words. They can write stories in any language they want, be it Hindi, English, Bhojpuri, Maithili or others. We have not kept any language barrier for them to participate in this Olympiad. We would get a book published in which we would include the 50 best stories of children,' said Rony Banerjee, co-founder of Kahaanighar, adding that there is no entry fee for participating in the Olympiad.

On the purpose of organising such an event, Rony added: 'The main purpose of organising this event is to infuse storytelling skills among children. We have grown up on stories narrated by our grandparents, parents and elders in our family. We used to read stories besides creating our own as well but these skills are misplaced in children these days. Children have stopped writing. They don't know writing creatively using vocabularies. This is why we have come up with such event. Our organisation is trying to build writing skills among children since the past three years of its inception as children are engaged in storytelling lessons in which experts come up with their own stories while children come up with their own stories and then stories are created together.'

The co-founder of Kahaanighar, Meenakshi Jha Banerjee, said while the book-release function would be held on November 12 at Premchand Rangshala, the names of the 50 students whose stories would be included in the book would be revealed a week prior to the event.

Meenakshi said the November 12 event would also witness release of two theme songs on Kahaanighar and Kahaanibaaz by a city youth.

Children seemed excited about taking part in the event. Avantika, a Class IV student of a private school, said: 'I have written many stories and always wanted them to showcase those at a good platform so that people can recognise my writings skills. I choose my story characters from people I know,' said Avantika.

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