Hoopoe Share Literacy Fund

A donation program originally begun by the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK), the Share Literacy program has over the years donated over 750,000 Hoopoe books to disadvantaged children and their caregivers in the United States. For these children, many of whom have never owned a book, this can be a seminal experience that changes their lifelong attitude towards reading and literature. The books, most available in Spanish-English bilingual editions as well as English, are designed to help children develop analogical, contextual, and critical thinking. They foster perception and intuition, promote social-emotional development, and encourage empathy, negotiation, and cooperation.

Begun in 2010 by the Institute for Human Knowledge (ISHK), the Books for Pakistan program was transferred to HSLF in October, 2022. This program has printed over 60,000 English-Urdu editions of Hoopoe books and has distributed Urdu-Pashto editions for the Afghan-Pakistan border region. At the request of our partners, Alif Laila Book Bus Society, we are also producing ten titles in Urdu-Baluchi and Urdu-Sindhi bilingual editions. To date, we have printed and distributed over 115,000 books in Pakistan and will print and distribute more just as soon as we have the funds to do so. In partnership with Alif Laila Book Bus Society, we are expanding the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) book box program to remote areas where kids have no books and do not know the joys of reading for pleasure; each one of these boxes of 100 books has a set of the ten Hoopoe Books by Idries Shah in the Urdu-English bilingual editions.

Begun by ISHK to serve refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Middle East, the Books for Refugees program has recently expanded to serve Ukrainian refugees as well. We publish universal stories in bilingual editions, pairing the reader’s mother tongue (including Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Arabic, Ukrainian, and more) with the Western language he or she will need for the future.

We are privileged to work with partners who have the resources and local understanding to provide schools, libraries and adult literacy classes where they are most needed. 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 France, Germany and the Middle East. These families 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.