Have you heard of Scholastic’s My Afghan Library program? Funded by the US Embassy in Kabul, Scholastic designed a program in January 2011 to promote literacy in early readers in Afghanistan with translated books and hands-on training in classrooms. After many successful years, the program recently concluded in January 2015.
The launch of the program first involved translating 90 fiction and nonfiction titles to the Dari and Pashto languages for readers grades 1-3. These translated books were approved by the Afghan Ministry of Education for classroom use. To translate the titles, Scholastic worked with a Dari and Pashto speaking editor in New York, who also ended up visiting Afghanistan for insight during the book selection process.
Two different book sets were made available for classrooms: the first for larger, primary schools (100+ students) that contained five copies of each title (or, 450 total books), and a smaller set for rural, community schools containing 90 total books. The books arrived in Afghanistan in August 2012, and reached classrooms throughout the country by September-November 2012.
Besides distributing books in key languages, the My Afghan Library program also provided Scholastic-managed teacher training and a follow-up program for educators. The teacher training was conducted by the Afghan NGO Noor Educational and Capacity Development Organization (NECDO), who also helped Scholastic design the curriculum. Scholastic worked with two NGOs in Afghanistan to help manage the on-site portion of the program.
In its last quarter alone, the program concluded training and monitoring sessions in ten provinces/districts across 34 schools. In the Ghazni district alone, program staff successfully concluded training with 30 teachers as well as the Directorate of Education staff. Teachers had nothing but positives to say about the impact of the program, with a number of them mentioning support from parents, notable improvements from students, and successful integration of the lessons crafted for classrooms.
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about the My Afghan Library program, please contact Program Manager Eva Jakubowski.
Photos courtesy of the Afghan NGO Noor Educational and Capacity Development Organization (NECDO)
