LATEST NEWS!
Over 2.4 million Hoopoe books can now be printed and distributed to Afghan children!!!!
We are delighted to inform everyone that Hoopoe Books has received a Public Diplomacy Grant from the U.S. Embassy Kabul Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Department of State to print and distribute six Hoopoe titles.
1,730,000 books will be in Dari-Pashto bilingual editions and 736,000 will be in English: a total of 2,466,000 books! The grant will also support 115,000 self-explanatory Teacher’s Guides which will be distributed for use with each title and 65,000 audio versions of the six stories in Cassette or CD.
In addition, the grant will enable us to provide teacher training for 200+ teachers; and the creation and distribution of three 30-minute call-in radio programs, each airing two stories for local radio stations.
The above numbers are based upon requests we received before the proposal deadline from 23 Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) working with schools and orphanages in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan. Click here for the list of NGOs.
Now we can certainly start to make a difference to some of the over 12 million school-age children, very few of whom have seen an illustrated storybook in their own main languages, let alone owned one.
It will also make a difference to the way children learn once their teachers use these traditional Afghan tales in the classroom. At this time, literacy classes tend to focus entirely on rote memorization, whereas our focus is on developing literary and thinking-skills.
We will keep our progress posted on our website, so keep checking.
How did this amazing opportunity come about?
A number of the 13 U.S. Provincial Restoration Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan were distributing Hoopoe books to street children and schools. Their terrific effort was supported by a grant from a private foundation that matched funds mostly donated by the families and friends of the PRT staff.
Afghan children, their families and teachers all loved the books. As a result, a number of the PRTs contacted the U.S. Cultural Affairs Office in Kabul about procuring a larger quantity of our books for distribution in their respective areas.
The Cultural Affairs Office followed up on this by contacting us in August of last year, and after learning about the full scope of Hoopoe’s activities in Afghanistan, it suggested that Hoopoe take a look at the opportunities for Public Diplomacy grant funding available, as advertised on the Embassy’s website, and that we consider applying for funds to support a national-level program, as opposed to focusing just on a few provinces. Of course, we decided to pursue this opportunity! The grant went through several iterations and was finally approved to start this month!
URGENT HELP NEEDED:
If you would like to help us fulfill the potential of this project, we understand that many of the NGOs have insufficient to no school supplies. We want to make a huge effort to collect NEW supplies. If you are interested in helping us do this, please contact Sally at hoopoebooks@aol.com. We have a Powerpoint show that will help you demonstrate need, and we can provide support as you go about this. School starts in Afghanistan in the beginning of March, so we hope to have supplies shipped from the U.S. via the Denton Program by the end of February.
As people see the books now in circulation, we continue to receive requests, so your continued support to provide more and more of these books and new titles to Afghan children is very much appreciated! Click here to donate.
More Information
Dari-Pashto Editions
Our Afghan Publishing Program and Literacy in Afghanistan
Afghanistan has the highest proportion of school-aged children in the world, yet 45% of them do not attend school. Only 28% of Afghans over 15 years old are literate.
Give a child a book and she’ll find someone to help her learn to read it.
About the Stories:
These traditional Afghan stories were originally created as a tool for children’s education. While entertaining, they focus on high-level thinking and universal themes, including problem solving, building self-esteem, negotiation, overcoming difficulties, and finding peaceful solutions. The stories are designed to help children develop analogical, contextual, and critical thinking, particularly as a response to difficulties, and to provide a framework for the growth of richer thought patterns and behaviors as they move forward with their lives. Thus, for example, in The Old Woman and the Eagle, an old woman tries to change an eagle into a pigeon, just because she has never seen an eagle before – so for her he has to be a strange-looking pigeon. Children, who are all individual “eagles,” readily respond to the lessons this story contains. In Neem the Half-Boy (to be translated and published in 2011/2012), the protagonist must overcome a series of difficulties, but he learns that it is best to negotiate with a fire-breathing dragon rather than threaten it in order to accomplish his goals, a very positive action that children will latch onto.
These stories foster thinking, perception and intuition, promote social-emotional development, and problem solving and encourage empathy, negotiation and cooperation. Immersing a child in these themes stimulates new thought patterns and helps create options in a child’s repertoire of possible responses to events and difficulties in their lives.
Countering Extremist Voices:
The thought patterns developed through familiarity with these tales are incompatible with extremism and, in fact, result in a flexibility of mind that will not coexist with extremist beliefs. The fact that such results can be produced by stories that are unquestionably Afghan at heart and based in traditional Afghan culture gives them a layer of protection, akin to Moses’ basket in the biblical story. The stories can help them succeed and take root in the rough-and-tumble of modern Afghan culture where ideas and educational methods explicitly associated with Western culture might not fare as well.
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 each book to encourage literacy and thinking skills.
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, orphanages and NGOs who have ordered and continue to order books from us.
Audio and Video Production:
We are working with Susan Armon from Ariana Afghanistan Television to produce audio versions of the stories in both languages for classroom and local radio.
Our Progress so far:
- 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
- 2010 Thanks to support from our donors and volunteers:
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We have published four more titles and two more are on the way.
- We have printed and distributed 100,000 books to date and more are planned as soon as possible.
- We have created a Teacher Training Guide. This and the Teachers Lesson Plans for use in the classroom are currently being translated.
- We are completing audio versions in Dari and Pashto 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 radio program of half-hour segments for Afghan radio stations.
- We are developing video versions of the stories in Dari and Pashto for children’s TV.
Hoopoe books help children develop an understanding
of themselves and the world around them.
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