Books for Afghanistan

The Teaching-Stories published by Hoopoe Books are part of Afghanistan’s rich oral tradition, told there by campfire and candlelight for more than 1,000 years. Selected and written especially for children by the Afghan author and savant, Idries Shah, these universal tales have been commended by Western educators for their ability to foster thinking skills and perception.

Now the ISHK Hoopoe Books for Afghanistan program will ensure that these traditional tales return home in book form as part of an effort to improve Afghan literacy rates. We provide bilingual Dari-Pashto, and English-only paperbacks, audio readings of them, and classroom Teacher Guides, to schools, orphanages and libraries throughout Afghanistan.

Our Mission:
Our aim is to provide as many children as possible with their very own books, starting initially with a goal of providing 250,000 copies of each of the five
Dari-Pashto titles already translated. At this time, there are very, very few storybooks available in Afghanistan. Those in Dari or Pashto (their main languages) are even more scarce.

For at least 95% of these children, these will be the first books they own, and they may well be tales that their grandparents recognize from their own childhood.

We hope these books and audio readings of them will be used not only in schools but as distance family literacy programs via the radio where even rural families can learn to read from their books while they listen and participate in supplementary activities that we will provide to encourage literacy.

Our Program:

Translation and pre-press preparation:
We have a key translator and compositor in Kabul. Final translations are checked for accuracy by translators from the BBC Dari and Pashto World Service. Six books to date have been translated into Dari and Pashto, plus a step-by-step Teacher Guide has been developed by Afghan and US Educators for use with the books to encourage literacy and thinking skills. Five Dari-Pashto bilingual titles are press-ready, and they each have Teacher Guides in both languages to accompany them.

Dari-Pashto Editions

Printing and distribution:
Dr. Farid Bazger, Founder and Director of Khatiz Organization for Rehabilitation (KOR), will supervise the printing of all our books, and KOR will liaise with the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) to arrange distribution to schools and orphanages who have ordered and continue to order books from us. KOR have been printing and distributing illustrated books to schools in Afghanistan for the Afghan Reading Project for some time now. ARCS has a youth program in 24 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces which is supported by the organization’s network of 41,000 volunteers including school teachers and government employees.

Audio and Video Production:
We are working with Susan Armon from Ariana Afghanistan Television to produce audio versions of the stories in both languages, read with and without page-turn signals for classroom use in the more urban areas and for distance-learning literacy programs via the radio, and to create videos of the stories for TV as well.

Our Progress

• 2007/8 250,000 copies of The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water were distributed
• 2009 35,000 copies of The Boy Without a Name were printed and distributed

Excited third grade boys in Mazar-I-Sharif receive their
own copy of The Boy Without Name by Idries Shah.

NOW Thanks to support from our donors and volunteers:

• We have printed and distributed an initial run of 5,000 copies each of The Farmer’s Wife and The Silly Chicken plus a reprint of The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water, and are now gathering requests for a larger printing
• We have completed audio versions of The Boy Without a Name and The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water, read with and without
  page-turn signals, and will continue to record additional titles
• We are developing a distance-learning program of one-hour segments for Afghan radio stations
• We are developing video versions of the stories in Dari and Pashto for children’s TV

Should you wish to see the books in question, they are available to read at the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) in English, Spanish, Dari and Pashto: Visit en.childrenslibrary.org/ and on the “Read Books” drop-down tab, do a “keyword search” for Hoopoe Books.

With each print run we plan to produce enough copies to keep the cost of each book, inclusive of ancillary materials, to a minimum – so even a small contribution will help us reach our goal!

IN ADDITION...

If you are in touch with organizations in Afghanistan that might need these books and teacher guides, or know of NGOs that are able to cover the cost of the books they need themselves, please write to Sally Mallam at the email address, hoopoebooks@aol.com, with the contact information, or put them in touch directly with her.

Do you want to support a specific organization? If you wish your donation
to go to a specific organization or program, just let us know.

Hoopoe books help children develop an understanding
of themselves and the world around them.

From thinking children come thinking adults.