The ability to read and write is something we all take for granted. Without it, we’d have a hard time functioning in today’s world, even outside the workplace. Although we assume literacy is a skill everyone shares, unfortunately that’s not the case. Even in a highly literate society like ours, one-fourth of all children grow up not knowing how to read. That translates into millions of children, and it puts them at a tremendous disadvantage. Studies have shown, for example, that two-thirds of all students who can’t read proficiently by the end of fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare. In an attempt to help break that vicious circle, I’ve been a long-time volunteer for an organization called Share Literacy (www.shareliteracy.org), which works through established literacy programs like Head Start to provide books and related materials to disadvantaged children (more than 600,000 to date) and their teachers and parents. One program I’ve worked with as a Share Literacy volunteer is the Higher Horizons Head Start program in Falls Church, VA, which is not far from where I live. The families of the kids at Higher Horizons come from all over the world — Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East. Seeing the entranced looks on their faces as they sit listening to a teacher read them a story, and then seeing their proud smiles as they carry their own copy of the book home, accompanied by parents who understand the importance of reading to their children, fills me with hope and makes me think that these kids, at least, have a bright future ahead of them.
MEANWHILE, HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD …
Although the frontpage news from Afghanistan hasn’t been too good these days, a number of Afghan success stories have me optimistic. The stories I’m referring to are hundreds of years old, and are part of Afghanistan’s rich oral tradition. They’ve helped teach reading and thinking skills to children in the U.S. for more than a decade, and now they’re being used for the same purposes in the country of their origin, thanks to the efforts of an educational nonprofit I do volunteer work for. Hoopoe Books (www.hoopoekids.com), a division of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (www.ishk.net), began publishing these tales in the U.S. as illustrated children’s books in 1998, because of their ability to help develop higher-level thinking skills. Through ISHK’s Share Literacy program (www.shareliteracy.org), more than 600,000 of these books have been distributed here, in partnership with schools and educational agencies. This led Hoopoe to launch a project to “repatriate” these stories to Afghanistan, retranslated back into Pashto and Dari, the country’s two principal languages. More than 2.5 million of these Pashto-Dari editions have so far been distributed to libraries, schools and orphanages throughout Afghanistan, with the help of an Afghan NGO as well as members of U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams, plus a grant from the U.S. State Department. In addition, hundreds of Afghan teachers have been trained in how best to use these stories. Almost three-quarters of all Afghans over the age of 15 are illiterate — a disproportionate number of them female — and almost five million of the country’s 12 million school-age children have no access to education, with those in school often lacking basic supplies and books. So this project, which makes sure the books are given to girls as well as boys, seems to be making a difference in rebuilding Afghanistan’s human resources.
