By Kathy Sweeney – Amida Taqieva lives with her children—4-year-old Elvira and 2-year-old Safarmamad—in the tiny and remote village of Deh, Tajikistan. Until two years ago, only outdated, broken down textbooks in Russian were available in the school library, the only library in the village. In Tajikistan, books in Russian don’t serve much purpose for most children, who learn Tajik before Russian. During the long winter months, there is no electricity to power televisions, radios, computers, or even a light to read by. Without power, in a village without quality books in a language most children can easily understand, winter evenings are dark, cold and dull.
[…] In 2012, USAID established the Reading for Children project in partnership with the Aga Khan Foundation to support pre-primary literacy in Tajikistan. Pre-primary literacy is considered a critical building block for success during subsequent stages of schooling, and a critical step to ending extreme poverty.
The importance of reading to children is taking center stage in Tajikistan, giving rise to more libraries, trained librarians and actively involved parents.
Click here to read more Reading Their Way Out of Poverty | FrontLines July/August 2014 | U.S. Agency for International Development.
Related: https://ismailimail.wordpress.com/category/cities-and-countries/asia/tajikistan/
https://ismailimail.wordpress.com/category/institutions-of-ismaili-imamat/aga-khan-foundation/
Ismailimail 