Stories of hope and healing for those who live with war.

11/29/09

In the year of the new millennium, there was an increasing awareness of the grave toll twenty five years of conflict was having on the mental and emotional health of the children and women of Afghanistan. With the Taliban still in power, foreign aid was not readily available to the populace. 

Faculty members of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada sought to develop a means to ameliorate the mental and emotional distress of war-torn families in Afghanistan. Alongside these themes was the wish to strengthen possibilities for peace through understanding and valuing peaceful processes. With the direction and assistance of Dr. Seddiq Weera, who patiently and diligently immersed the writing team in details of life in Afghanistan before the Russian invasion and experiences of ethnic and international conflict since, the authors have, with greatest respect and humility, attempted to offer these stories of hope, healing, and peace to those who live with war. Since beginning with the refugee communities in Peshawar, it was later possible to focus the project in several cities in Afghanistan.

The stories and puppets have also taken on an expatriate life in the West, too. Schoolchildren, university classes, church audiences, civil society organizations who have an interest in the fate of Afghan people and in peace processes have used and enjoyed these puppet-animated stories.

Nine years after the creation of the stories, they are an integral part of the educational curriculum in the new Afghanistan. The stories have been translated to the national languages of the country. The stories have been published and circulated throughout schools in the Kabul area. The stories are an important element in peace-building and reconstruction of the Afghan society that is an on-going challenge.

Master Teacher Training Workshops with Help the Afghan Children

Most recently, Mary-Jo Land traveled to Kabul in the spring of 2009 to hold two Master Teacher Trainer workshops for Help the Afghan Children, an Afghan-American NGO. The full story and photographs of the experience are here.

The original English language stories are here!	The puppet project
Each of the 16 stories is available here in both Adobe Acrobat PDF format (illustrated version) and Microsoft Word format (editable version). The files may be downloaded and used on screen; or printed and bound into a book as a class project. Translations of the stories in Dari and Pashto are now available in PDF format. We encourage you to translate the stories into the language of your area. Please share them with the world by sending a file back to us when you are done. We will post the translations here. The stories in English The stories in Dari and Pashto Other languages	The characters in the stories, A Journey of Peace, come to life in an extraordinary undertaking. Learn more about this gift of joy and understanding. Puppets are needed in Kabul - can you or your group help?   Puppets augment the learning experience. We can help you get started. Puppet making instructions are here!
Images of the Journey