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Literacy programs choose Hoopoe Books to help children build language and reading skills
Now in its ninth year, our Hoopoe Books Share Literacy Program has donated over 250,000 books nationwide. We ensure that every child who participates in our programs receives at least one book to take home and keep. WHY ARE BOOKS IN THE HOME IMPORTANT?
Being read to as a child and having books in the home are the two most important indicators of future academic success. Yet families who live at or below the federal poverty level cannot afford to buy books and seldom have books in the home. Children exposed to books and reading during preschool
years enter kindergarten with the ability to understand 20,000 words,
versus 3,000 words for those children who do not have this exposure. Unfortunately, studies also show that if a child’s reading and vocabulary level is not in the higher range it is difficult for them ever to catch up. The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence and crime is welded to reading failure. There is growing recognition among educators that the Teaching-Stories collected and written for children by Idries Shah and published by ISHK's Hoopoe Books are especially effective in the development of reading, language, and thinking skills in children of all ages. Originating from the rich storytelling traditions of Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Middle East, these teaching tales were designed to teach children about themselves and their world. They activate analogical and critical thinking skills, foster social-emotional growth, intuition and perception. ISHK has a long list of requests for help from early childhood agencies and schools serving low-income children and their families who have all been severely hurt by the current economy. More often than not, there are not enough books and too little support for teachers: teaching resources and professional development training. Reading, comprehension and thinking skills are the specific skills these children need most to succeed in school and move beyond a life of poverty. With your support we can help them do this. Share Literacy relies on donations and grants to cover its direct expenses: production and printing of materials and professional development costs. To make a donation, please click here. DONATIONS FROM INDIVIDUALS FOR THE CURRENT YEAR WILL BE MATCHED BY A GRANT FROM A PRIVATE FOUNDATION, WHO WILL DOUBLE YOUR GIFT! Books for Afghanistan Program
 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.
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:
NOW Thanks to support from our donors and volunteers:
 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 http://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. Please help if you can: Make a secure donation to this effort, please click here and choose the “Books for Afghanistan” button. OR by mailing your check payable to: ISHK, PO Box 176, Los Altos, CA 94023 USA. All donations are tax-deductible in the USA. Books for Pakistan Program Your donation is desperately needed. Hoopoe Books/Share Literacy is now collaborating with DIL (Developments in Literacy) to donate these beautiful children’s books by Idries Shah to the children they serve. DIL runs 150 schools serving approximately 15,000 children, especially girls, in underdeveloped regions in Pakistan. These will be bilingual English and Urdu editions, so that children can read the Urdu translation and the English on the facing page. We are currently in the process of translating these titles and preparing the output files. The first two titles will be: The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water and The Clever Boy and the Terrible, Dangerous Animal.
They will be printed in Peshawar by Khatiz Organization for Rehabilitation (KOR), who is also printing our Dari and Pashto editions for Afghanistan. DIL will distribute the books to the children attending their schools. We hope to keep our costs to under one dollar per book and will be able to do this only if our print run is high enough. Please help us reach an initial 40,000 copies per title. We would like to do more than that and, with your help, we can. Please go to www.hoopoekids.com and check out these wonderful books and about Hoopoe.
 (You can find more SHARE LITERACY news on www.shareliteracy.org) SHARE LITERACY RECEIVES A $50,000 GRANT FROM KAISER PERMANENTE TO ALLOW OVER 17,000 UNDERSERVED BAY AREA CHILDREN TO RECEIVE BOOKS DURING THE 2009 HOLIDAY SEASON
We were able to provide special readings at some schools for these giveaways. Sally Mallam read Dende Maro to third graders in the McEntee Academy in the Alum Rock School District in San Jose, CA.(For an article on the event, click here.) Volunteer Jonathan Russell read The Man with Bad Manners to first-graders at Martin Luther King Jr. School in Oakland, CA. (For an article on the event, click here.) OVER 4400 BOOKS GIVEN OUT TO CHILDREN IN MANY OTHER STATES THANKS TO THE 2009 SHARE HOLIDAY FUND DRIVE Thanks to Share Holiday Fund supporters, we have been able to donate over 4400 books to children in many other states. For some of these programs serving homeless and at-risk families, through our Share Holiday Fund, we will continue to give them books on an as-needed basis. HOOPOE BOOKS ARE FEATURED IN EAST COAST COMMUNITY PROGRAMS Here are two recent articles featuring Hoopoe books used in children's programs in communities in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
SOME SCHOOLS AND EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAMS SUPPORTED BY SHARE LITERACY All Bilingual Press and ¡ASISTA!, (Seattle, WA): These agencies provide bilingual and Spanish-language books and CDs to schools and libraries and other organizations in the U.S. and Latin America, and Share Literacy has been able to support the need for these books thanks to Share supporters and volunteers in the Seattle area. Alum Rock School District (San Jose, CA): In Spring 2009, the Alum Rock School District received over 7,300 books for their students in Grades K-3 and ancillary materials for their teachers. And thanks to the $50,000 grant from Kaiser Permanente Community Benefits program in November 2009, Share was able to donate over 6,800 more books for grades K-3. Bronx Early Learning Center (Bronx, NY): In 2009, we were able to donate two sets of books and teaching materials for 250 preschool children and their 47 teachers. CampFire USA (Long Beach, CA): Share Literacy has been able to provide books and teacher training and supplies to their after-school and outreach programs for elementary school-aged children and their families since early 2007. Community School District #7 (Bronx, NY): Thanks to Share Literacy supporters and donors, Share donated over 7,200 books and materials for children and teachers in grades PreK-5 for use during the 2009-2010 school year. East Palo Alto Schools (CA): Share donated Hoopoe books, including Dende Maro: The Golden Prince by Sally Mallam, to the EPAK (East Palo Alto Kids Foundation). The Dende Maro books were used in a bookcase project for Costano School’s graduating second graders, where each graduating student received a beautiful bookcase stocked with books. Share Literacy also donated more Dende Maros to the East Palo schools for use in their art classes and libraries. In addition, the Kaiser Permanente Community Benefits grant in November 2009 allowed Share to donate even more books to East Palo Alto schools.
Glide Foundation After School Childcare Programs (San Francisco, CA): Since 2008, grants from the Kaiser Permanente Community Benefits program have allowed Share to give sets of books to Glide Foundation’s After-School and Childcare programs. (Click here to read an article about Glide and Hoopoe books.) Gulf Coast Community Services Association's (GCCSA) Head Start Program (Houston, TX): This is a comprehensive, early-childhood development program for children ages three to five from economically challenged families. The GCCSA Head Start Program has been serving eligible children and families in the Houston, Harris County area since 1964. Share was able to donate a 2nd set of Home Literacy Kits to their over 2000 students and teachers in early 2009.
IHSD (Institute for Human and Social Development, South San Francisco, CA): IHSD received books to give out to all 750 children in their Head Start programs and their teachers received books, CDs and teaching guides. IHSD scheduled a special Literacy Day at one of the schools in East Palo Alto where officers from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office and community firefighters conducted a read-along from The Clever Boy and the Terrible, Dangerous Animal and connected the story to safety for the kids. Mountain View Whisman School District (CA) - Title 1 Program: Thanks to a generous grant from the Kaiser Permanente Community Benefits program, Share was able to provide over 2,500 books and complementary teacher materials to PreK-Gr. 5 in this school district for the 2nd year in a row. Prospect Hill Academy (Somerville, MA): Thanks to Share donors and the efforts of volunteers, schools and youth programs in the Boston area received gifts of books for students in the Spring of 2009. Karin Kugel, Librarian of the Prospect Hill Academy, sent a packet of student compositions on Fatima the Spinner and The Boy Without a Name by Idries Shah. The students wrote about having special dreams and patience and about learning new words and having fun with reading. As a second grader wrote: "…I think the golden rule of the story [Fatima the Spinner and the Tent] is never give up your hopes and if something bad happens something good will come out of it."
RESA VIII Head Start (Martinsburg, WV): Thanks to fundraising efforts of the Mid-Atlantic Share Chapter and ISHK donors, we are able to provide a fourth program to this Head Start organization for their 425 children and 58 teachers. Oakland Head Start (Oakland, CA): Supporters of Share Literacy, including the Kaiser Permanente Community Benefits program, allowed Share to donate a second program of books and materials to their program of over 1100 children and 84 teachers. San Francisco Unified School District Early Childhood Education programs: During the 2009-2010 school year, Share has been able to provide books and teacher materials to over 6 agencies in the SFUSD early education program, including Bryant CDC, Grattan CDC, Kate Kennedy CDC, Mission CDC, Noriega CDC, San Francisco Head Start, and Sarah B. Cooper CDC. If you or someone you know is interested in co-sponsoring the printing and donation of Hoopoe Books to literacy programs, please contact us. To preview the illustrations, read reviews, download the free teacher manuals, and purchase the books at a special discount, visit our Hoopoe Books website.
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The
time from birth through age eight is the most critical for children
in acquiring the “building blocks” of literacy, yet an alarming
number of children today are entering school without the foundation
they need to succeed. 
Our
very grateful thanks to Kaiser Permanente Community Grants Program for
their continuing support and for their very generous grant in November
2009 of $50,000 to help us provide books and to low-income and homeless
children in Northern California. Programs around the Bay Area are
writing to us weekly on how much this gift meant to the children in
their programs, especially in these bad economic times. 
Fremont
Unified School District Preschool Program, Fremont, CA: Share
donated books and teacher materials to Fremont Unified School District
Preschools. For an article on a special read-along event with police
officers, click 
