A mobile app that reads out stories to children in Maltese has been launched in online stores by a group of Junior College students.
The team behind the audio-visual mobile and tablet application is a group of nine first year Ġan Franġisk Abela students taking part in an entrepreneurship programme.
“The issue for better use of the Maltese language was raised through the media last year, and we felt the need for something that would encourage children under 10 to read stories in Maltese, and maybe even write their own tales,” said Nico Fauser, one of these young app developers.
So in October, the group, called Makes a Future Difference, started developing the app as part of the HSBC Company Programme organised yearly by the Junior Achievement (Young Enterprise) Malta Foundation, a non-government, non-profit organisation promoting entrepreneurship education, skills for employability and financial literacy.
The young enterprise company came up with MeStories – an application for electronic devices for children up to 10 years of age.
They want to encourage children to read and at the same time act as a springboard for young authors by featuring budding authors.
On the app, audio recordings accompany the script of the stories and each one of the 16 tales is colour-coded, based on the international book band system identifying stories according to age and difficulty. Some of them are illustrated.
The team is working in collaboration with the Għaqda tal-Malti at the University of Malta.
While some of the stories are written by well-known authors, like Carmel G. Cauchi, Manwel Magri and Rita Saliba, others were written specifically for the app by 13 and 14-year-olds.
The team will be at the Point in Sliema today promoting the application, which has been launched on the App Store and Google Play.
The team can be contacted on mestoriesjaye@gmail.com.