Read with Me in Sistan and Balouchestan Province

Geographical location: South-East of Iran
Age-group: Kindergarten and Preschool, First to Fourth grade of Elementary School
Number of Children: 20,000
Number of Teachers: 800
Start Date: December 2014

Province Conditions

According to a Member of Parliament from Sistan and Baluchestan, 200,000 children and adolescents in Sistan and Baluchestan Province are out of school, and only 50 percent of students finish high school. Moreover, one third of the classes in this province are non-standard. 70% of the population lives below the poverty line, and Sistan and Baluchestan is the last province of Iran in terms of development.

The deprivation, unemployment and long borders of the province with the countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan and access to free waters have led to the prevalence of smuggling. Baluchistan has been struggling with drought for many years, and this has led people to abandon agricultural work and supply their families through the exchange of goods.

According to many teachers covered by the “Read with Me” program, many families refrain from expressing their family providers’ real job by general terms such as “free-lance”, while most of them provide their families through smuggling. Another problem in this province is the high rate of unregistered marriages and children without birth certificates.

Regarding many issues in this province the Institute for Research on the History of Children’s Literature started the Read with Me project in Sistan and Balouchestan province in cooperation with Shahpari Association.

The Shahpari Association which was founded in 2013, has focused its supports and efforts on empowering and improving the cultural and educational level of girls and women in Sistan and Balouchestan. It performs several projects, one of them is “Happiness and Hope for the Future”, a book reading program for sick children in hospitals, which started its activity in four phases: Improving the ambiance of the patient’s room, Storytelling, Book and Book Reading Promotion (Reading Aloud) and holding educational courses.

Since December 2014, this project has been implemented in AliAsghar Hospital for children suffering from Thalassemia and Hemophilia. The purpose of this project is to supply quality books for these children in order to improve their quality of life.

Project Implementation

Since Autumn 2015, the Read with Me project started cooperating with the Education Office of Sistan and Balouchestan in the schools of Zabol, Zahedan and Iranshahr. Since many children in this province are bilingual and they have serious problems in understanding and speaking Persian, the project focused on basic literacy improvement plan based on the Creative child-centered education packages. These activities resulted considerable improvements in the children’s literacy, their reading and writing skills, the environment of classrooms and the knowledge of children and teachers regarding Children’s Literature.

In the following academic year of 2016/17, Read with Me was implemented in Zabol, Iranshahr, Nikshahr, Konarak and Chabahar, covering nearly 9000 children through quality books and children’s literature.

Read with Me continued its activities in this province for the third year. In the previous academic year, Zabol, Iranshahr, Saravan, Konarak, Nikshahr and nomadic schools of Zahedan participated in our project.

During these years, Read with Me in Sistan and Balouchestan has been sponsored by these companies or benefactors: