Geographical location: Sistan and Balochestan Province, around Zahedan, Karim-abad
Children’s age group: first to fifth grades of elementary school
Number of children under protection: 200
Date of the beginning: August 2021
The program is currently running.

“Bahar Ayandeh” (literally meaning future spring), a girls’ elementary school in Karim-abad, Zahedan, is one of the schools in which educationally deprived children who are not able to enroll in regular state schools can register and receive education. There are around 200 students in the first to fifth grades in this elementary school, all of whom are those who have been deprived of education (whether Iranian citizens or non-citizens.)

Thanks to the efforts undertaken by the principal of the school and the support given to them by the “Afarinesh Ayandeh” (Future Creation) institute, this school joined the “Read with Me” program. The teachers of the school became acquainted with creative methods of teaching basic literacy and reading books to children as well as the methods of sharing quality books with children by participating in online workshops such as “Learning Phonological and Phonemic Awareness Skills”, “Learning Farsi through literature”, “Picture Riddle Dictionary”, and “Children’s Citerature and Reading Aloud”. In September 2021, in the beginning of the new educational year, the school received more than 600 books for reading aloud and for education. The teachers started working on child-centered creative education packages, along with reading aloud of quality books as part of the curriculum in this school.

Literacy for the Mothers

A month after the beginning of the educational year, a number of local mothers and women who had little or no ability to read and write enrolled in the special literacy classes for adults in the school. These women are instructed by the use of the Learning Farsi through literature package. This is a new opportunity for these women who have been deprived of education before.

Ms. Elham Khatibi and Mr. Farhad Pezhman are the financial sponsors of “Read with Me” program in this school.