Posted on Feb. 5: Once upon a time in Afghanistan

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/puppets_6.jpg” caption=”Joanna Santa Barbara”]Storybooks for schools and homes across Afghanistan are the latest tool peace workers are using to help that country's next generation work toward building a society that will live peacefully ever after.

Joanna Santa Barbara, an instructor at McMaster's Centre for Peace Studies and Hamilton-area child psychiatrist, is part of an international team of peace workers involved with peace education initiatives in the war-ravaged country.

“Progress has been made in schools over the past several years, and we're thrilled that the Ministry of Higher Education so eagerly picked up on our work,” says Santa Barbara. “It's important that children hear messages of peace when their country is going through such a fragile, volatile phase.”

Santa Barbara and her Centre for Peace Studies associates hosted peace education sessions in Afghanistan in partnership with other groups, hoping the sessions might lead toward national reconciliation. They built material for the series of 16 stories from those sessions, and worked with Afghanistan native and Centre for Peace Studies Associate Seddiq Weera to get the stories implemented into the school curriculum across the country.

The stories narrate events in the lives of members of an extended family who hail from rural Afghanistan. Readers accompany them through some significant challenges, including a tragic land mine accident, and the uncertainty of a move from the farm to the city.

“We developed these stories with a number of filters in mind,” says Santa Barbara. “Certainly we wanted to make sure they were interesting and entertaining, but we also wanted to be sure they communicated the peace education messages our group agreed to convey. We also wanted them to be culturally and religiously appropriate, and that meant we had to take the time to gain an understanding of what daily life was really like in Afghanistan.”

All 16 books in the series have been translated into both Dari and Pashto, the two official languages of Afghanistan, and they've been illustrated by Hamilton-based and illustrator and Afghanistan native, Yar Taraky. Puppets resembling the illustrated characters have also recently been developed and distributed to encourage discussion of the characters in the series and how they approach problem solving and reconciliation.

Photo caption: Joanna Santa Barbara with some of the storybooks and puppets that have been created for schools and homes in Afghanistan. Photo credit: Lisa Caines