Thinking children become thinking adults
With the help of volunteers and donors, we are able to print and distribute millions of beautifully illustrated traditional Teaching-Stories to underserved children. The regions which we serve are ever-increasing. This means we value your suggestions of projects which might benefit from free books.
Meanwhile, we are grateful for any introductions to sponsors and benefactors, who might be able to help us get more free books into children’s hands.
We currently support initiatives in the US, Canada, the UK, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ukraine, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Germany, Hungary, and Nicaragua. With your continued support, we hope to help children in India, Morocco, Syria, Turkey, Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama, Romania and Poland.
“The most successful way to improve the reading achievement of low-income children is to increase their access to print” – Newman, Sanford, et al. “America’s Child Care Crisis: A Crime Prevention Tragedy”; Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2000
To learn more about our global outreach programs, or to suggest a sponsor, or a project that needs books, please contact us.
Books for refugees
Hoopoe publishes universal stories from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan in bilingual editions, pairing the reader’s mother tongue with the Western language they will need for their future. These beautiful, illustrated books are ideal for both school-age children and ESL classes.
We would like to reach many more refugee camps and community centers, where families forced to leave their homeland are stranded, not only in the English-speaking world, but in Europe and the Middle East — these children are without storybooks in their own languages and from their own culture. Too many children are missing months, even years of school at a time when a love of reading and learning can mean so much for their lives.
For more information on our programs for refugees, please contact us.
Did you know?
61%
of children in the U.S. who live in poverty have no books in their homes
1 in 3
U.S. children enters kindergarten lacking basic pre-reading skills
By age 3
children living in poverty have heard 30 million fewer words than their peers who do not live in poverty
The only
behavioral measure that correlates significantly with reading scores is the number of books in the home
The Literacy Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions, 1998.
Books for Ukraine
Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, we rushed to respond by getting as many books as we could to children in need.
A massive operation ensued, with simultaneous print-runs in the UK and Poland, resulting in almost 60,000 Ukrainian books. Thanks to very brave convoy operators, we were able to get 20,000 books to children inside Ukraine, with our remaining books going to host families, and refugee centres in other countries.
Since that initial push, we have distributed tens of thousands more books to Germany, and Hungary and we plan to distribute another huge shipment in Romania.
Incidentally, prior to being accepted into Hungary, our titles had to be checked to assure that they do not encourage homosexuality.
While not wishing to be drawn into political debate, we feel there has never been a more important time to use teaching-stories to foster tolerance, hope and critical thinking.
Books for Latin America
Meanwhile in Mexico, our books are used in initiatives helping street children, abused minors and the vulnerable.
And in Nicaragua and Guatemala we supply books to community schools, which promise children support only when they continue their state education.
In Colombia we are delighted to be supplying books to Biblioburo – a donkey library which visits remote villages, teaching children to read, so that they in turn can educate their parents.
Books for Afghanistan
For more than four decades, Afghanistan has been decimated by a continuous state of war, which began with the 1979 Soviet invasion and persists today with Taliban rule. The literacy needs of Afghan children are crucial to the stability and progress of the country, yet Afghanistan’s ability to educate its children through these turbulent years is severely impeded.
“An estimated 3.7 million children are out-of-school in Afghanistan. 60% of them are girls.” – UNICEF 2023
Over 5.3 Million Books Donated to Children in Afghanistan since Our Program Started in 2007!
Books for Pakistan
According to a UNESCO Press International Report “the picture of illiteracy in Pakistan is grim, and especially alarming in rural areas due to social and cultural obstacles. … One of the most deplorable aspects is that in some places, particularly northern tribal areas, the education of girls is strictly prohibited on religious grounds. This is a gross misinterpretation of Islam, the dominant religion in Pakistan (96 percent of the population), which urges both men and women to acquire an education. They report that the situation is the most critical in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Baluchistan, where the female literacy rate stands between 3 per cent and 8 per cent.
We are helping to change this!
The foundations for literacy are laid in the language that infants, toddlers and preschool-aged children hear every day, which is why Hoopoe aims to provide books in underserved children’s mother tongues. Thanks to our partnership with Alif Laila Book Bus Society we have already sent thousands of Urdu-Pashto books to children in the camps for internally displaced families and in schools in Peshawar, the capital of KPK. An Urdu-Baluchi edition of these titles has been printed and distributed in Baluchistan. We have also distributed thousands of Urdu-English editions to underserved schoolchildren in the Lahore region, as well as Urdu-Sindhi editions for those children who speak Sindhi. Only through education will things begin to change and literacy is the beginning. Hoopoe stories entertain and inspire children and foster a lifelong love of reading and learning.
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Subscribe to our newsletter
If you would like to receive regular news about Hoopoe Books, Books for Pakistan, Books for Refugees and Share Literacy programs please click the subscribe button.
We do not sell or rent or otherwise share email addresses or other personal information with anyone else. Check our privacy policy for details on how we protect and manage your submitted data.
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