Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Books, the best present

For a project as needy as Shawl Pacha School, all help is welcomed, even more when it materializes in a generous donation of books. It happened recently with the offer of 6000 books by the organization Hoopoe Books for Children - Awaking Young Minds.

Girl students show the new books, next to Dr. Said, "manager" of the school
Ajmal, the "principal" of the school, next to a boys class
 


Hoopoe Books is an imprint launched in 1998 by the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK), an educational NGO located in Los Altos, California (USA). The Institute has an ongoing program called Books for Afghanistan that aims to publish traditional children’s stories from Afghanistan, collected by Afghan author Idries Shah (who passed away in 1996), for over 30 years.

 
 

"The Teaching-Stories published by Hoopoe Books are part of Afghanistan’s rich storytelling tradition and for centuries were told and retold in teahouses, on street corners and bazaars, and by family members and friends as they sat around the fire on winter nights", we can read in the Internet page of the Afghanistan program. "Children learned about themselves and their world through these stories, and through repeated telling adults, too, obtained insight and wisdom to benefit their own experiences and choices."

 

For Hoopoe Books, it boils down to a maxim: "Give a young girl a book of her own, and she will find someone to help her read it".


Photos by HOM

Links:

Hoopoe Books website

Hoopoe Books Facebook page