Traditional Stories From Afghanistan Are Helping Canadian Children Learn To Read – and MoreProceeds from Storytelling Tour to Help Provide Books for Disadvantaged Kids VANCOUVER (October, 2006)– When Toronto storyteller Aubrey Davis appears next month at events across Canada to help raise funds for literacy programs, he'll be telling tales that have been told for centuries in Afghanistan. The programs these events are benefiting will provide books, based on those stories and others like them, to disadvantaged children across Canada. A million Canadian children – nearly one in six – live in poverty, and many of them struggle with illiteracy. Mr. Davis's benefit tour, called "A Melon Grows in Kandahar...," includes events in Calgary (Nov. 20), Vancouver (Nov. 22) and Ottawa (Jan.28, 2007). It is sponsored by the Institute for Cross-cultural Exchange (ICE) / Institut d'échanges interculturels (IEI), a Canadian charity that addresses literacy while also promoting cross-cultural education. In the one year since its inception, ICE (www.iceeducation.org) has provided over 5,000 books to disadvantaged children through such partner programs as the YWCA, United Way's "Success by Six," Frontier College and Calgary Reads. All proceeds from Mr. Davis' storytelling tour will help fund the Institute's current priority which is to donate high-quality books, featuring the Afghan tales, to literacy programs across Canada. The books are published by Hoopoe (www.hoopoekids.com), an imprint of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (www.ishk.net), an educational nonprofit founded more than 35 years ago. They contain beautifully illustrated renditions of traditional stories from Afghanistan, collected and adapted for children by Afghan author Idries Shah. Told for centuries throughout Central Asia and the Middle East, these stories address universal themes such as building self-esteem, persistence when facing adversity, and exercising thoughtful observation rather than rushing to judgment. In addition, they promote multicultural awareness, providing a positive representation of an important but little-understood culture, teaching us what we have in common and what we can learn from each other. But Hoopoe's tales do more than instruct and entertain. According to a growing number of educators and psychologists, as Teaching-Stories (the name given to the literary genre, which is all but unknown in Western cultures) they also help develop higher-level thinking skills. "These books are unique, in that they promote reading and thinking skills both in children and adults, while at the same time promoting crosscultural understanding," says Davis. For more information on The Tour: |