Porunai Nellai Book Fair highlighted newsletters of 92 school students

on Mar 25, 2022

Visitors at the Porunai Nellai Book Fair were surprised at witnessing stalls displaying poetry, paintings, art, and essays, all created by government school students from the district. As a part of a new initiative, this year they showcased newsletters of 92 government school students in Tirunelveli. Their skills were displayed through the newsletters that were placed.
Newsletters are usually published to showcase the student’s talent in a booklet and are further published in many private schools, Collector V Vishnu had earlier held a word with the Education Department regarding the initiative.

While discussing with TNIE, Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers Association Head and one of the coordinators of the initiative R Narumpunathan said, "We suggested this newsletter initiative to the Collector and based on it, we informed the students to create newsletters, to design a booklet with topics on specialties of their region, Porunai River, women poets, Sahitya Akademi Award winners of Tirunelveli and a few other topics. Many students surprised us by writing the history of Karukurichi pottery works, Mats of Pattamadai, and women poets.”

He added, “They designed and wrote for the newsletters by learning the process of making one. We expect new writers to emerge in the upcoming days. We plan to implement the idea of creating newsletters every three months."

Chief Educational Officer MKC Subhashini expressed his happiness and said this is the first time newsletters were released from the government schools with the student's essays, art, and poems as booklets. "We began to initiate the process during early March and conducted a meeting with the respective school principals in the district. As many as 43 high schools and 49 higher secondary schools took part. Despite this being the first time, the student's confidence was high and they contributed well,” she added.

Meanwhile, the students said they learned many new skills while creating the newsletter booklet as they got the opportunity to design, write, draw, paint, and attach pictures.