Photo: Zofeen T Ebrahim/The Guardian.
A GoRead worker helps to educate children in Pakistani slums through storytelling. The GoRead director says, “We cannot expect children to want to read if we don’t read to them first.”
If it’s true that Sauron is always collecting his strength to rise again, it’s also true that people who do good never stop doing good. Whatever happens, you can’t completely stamp out kindness or good works. They gather strength, too.
I hate hearing decent people’s defeatism. I like focusing on stories like today’s, stories of people trying to make the world a little better wherever they are.
Zofeen T Ebrahim writes at the Guardian, “Pedaling down a narrow alleyway in Karachi’s crowded Lyari Town, Saira Bano slows as she passes a group of children sitting on the ground, listening to a man reading aloud from a book. The eight-year-old gets off her bike, slips off her sandals, and sits on the mat at the back.
“She has already heard the story from Mohammad Noman, who is entertaining more than a dozen children with the tale of Noori, an insecure yellow parrot. ‘I don’t mind listening to it again,’ says Saira. ‘He’s so funny.’
“Noman, 23, is spending two weeks in Lyari pedaling an old ice-cream cart through its lanes, stopping to read his stories and leaving behind books for the children to borrow. He dropped out of school himself as a teenager but has returned to education and is now studying for his high school certificate.
“He is also one of two storytellers working part-time for the Kahaani Sawaari (Stories on Wheels) program, run by GoRead.pk, which is working to improve literacy among underprivileged communities in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.
“ ‘I become a kid when I am around the children,’ says Noman. In the past 18 months, he has visited 30 areas of Lyari, one of the most densely populated and deprived neighborhoods of Karachi, with more than 660,000 residents, mostly from the marginalised Baloch ethnic group.
“ ‘I have learned so much,’ says Noman. ‘It has brought a change in me as well. I’ve become more tolerant of people and developed patience. I think I have a certain rapport with children and they listen.’ …
“Education is free and compulsory in Pakistan yet, according to the UN, it has the world’s second-highest rate of children absent from school, at 44% of five to 16-year-olds. And 77% of 10-year-olds are unable to understand simple text, according to the World Bank. Books and uniforms can be prohibitively expensive in Pakistan. Saira dropped out of school a year ago when her father, who worked in a toy shop, lost his job as Pakistan’s economy was hit by rocketing food and fuel prices. …
“Erum Kazi, GoRead’s program director, says parents have told her how their children have developed a love for reading since the scheme began. …
“Nusser Sayeed, GoRead’s director [and] a former teacher, was inspired to set up the program after seeing ‘very little joy in the lives of children studying in schools in underprivileged neighborhoods.’ Children were growing up without anyone reading them stories, she says, adding: ‘We cannot expect children to read if we don’t read to them first.’ “
More at the Guardian, here. And in a related Guardian story, read about how a camel delivered books to poor children in Pakistan when Covid closed schools, here.
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