The Children's Songbook Project
This story begins in the 1960s. Louise Pascale, as part of her Peace Corps volunteer assignment in Afghanistan, worked with a group of Afghan musicians and poets to collect and print a book of 16 children's songs. It was distributed to elementary schools in Kabul. When her two-year tour was over, she came back to the United States to study and teach. She brought a copy of the songbook back with her, and put it on a shelf.
In the late 1990s, the political climate changed in Afghanistan. The Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist group, came into power and began exerting repressive policies. They censored all cultural activities and institutions, music among them. Musicians were exiled, and all music and music-making was illegal, even the humming of lullabies to young children. It did not take long for children's songs, which had previously been taught in schools, to disappear completely from Afghan culture.
US-led forces dismantled the Taliban in 2001, and the country began the process of slowly regaining its cultural awareness. Pascale, by then a professor at Lesley, committed to returning her collection of songs from the original songbook to the Afghan children. This led to the beginning of the Afghan Children's Songbook Project, and the subsequent reprinting, in 2006, of Qu Qu Qu Barg-e-Chinaar: Children's Songs from Afghanistan.
A second book, Awsaana See Saana (One Tale, Thirty Tales) was created and distributed in 2012, with 16 more children's songs from various ethnic groups and an accompanying 60-minute CD.
Currently, approximately 50,000 copies of the two songbooks have been distributed to schools and orphanages throughout the country. Each songbook includes a CD and cassette tape. An accompanying teacher's guide for each songbook was also developed in 2010 after Pascale returned to Afghanistan to assess the project. She found that "Afghan teachers rarely have training opportunities, and are desperate to learn more effective strategies for engaging students in learning."
The goal for the songbook project is to not only preserve and honor the rich musical heritage of Afghanistan but also enhance basic literacy skills. Music is a natural link to building literacy. Because writing materials are scarce in the country, each songbook is now delivered with a small notebook and two pencils for each child. The songbooks are offered free of charge in Afghanistan but due to a large number of Afghans who live outside Afghanistan, the songbooks can be purchased through the Afghan Children's Songbook Project.
Funding for the project comes from organizations such as National Geographic, Save the Children, Afghan Institute for Learning, Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WAfghan), as well as through individual donors and the US State Department's Cultural Affairs Office in Kabul. In 2016, CW4Wafghan, at their Afghanistan Ascending: Strengthening Education Together conference, awarded Pascale their Champion for Education in Afghanistan Award for her work on the Afghan Children's Songbook Project.