The Billion Readers Initiative (BIRD) aims to make reading practice simple, joyful, and habitual for every Indian through an innovative tool called Same Language Subtitling (SLS). In a country of 1.4 billion people, hundreds of millions still struggle to read even a simple sentence, with women and girls accounting for 60% of the weak readers. With SLS, reading becomes a part of daily life. When subtitles in the same language as the audio are added to popular songs, shows, films, and other media, everyday entertainment transforms into repeated reading practice. Long term exposure to SLS has shown to significantly boost reading skills beyond what is achieved at school. With SLS, improvement is drastic and clearly visible as people read along to the words. This makes SLS an intuitive, data-backed path to a billion confident readers.

Reel Nomads were commissioned to create campaign films which would translate this core intention into a widely understood and adopted tool, leading to increased literacy in rural India.