Reading is paramount, explains Musharraf Ali Farooqi, a former Mittal Institute Fellow, saying, “Becoming a reader is the first step on the path to becoming a self-learner.” A novelist, scholar, and translator, he is also the founder of the Storykit Program, a unique program that inspires a love of reading among Pakistan’s children. Storykit boxes teach children the Urdu language, its classical literature, and its folklore through engaging, age-appropriate stories.
In 2023, Storykit launched the Pakistan Spelling Bee, holding competitions for both English and Urdu languages nationwide. Farooqi is leading a Malala Fund-supported program to help adolescent female students in Pakistan public schools write about their educational journey. Storykit is also carrying out an internet safety, media literacy and climate resilience campaign for Google Foundation.
He shared more about Storykit, and what he has been working on since he departed Cambridge.
Mittal Institute: Musharraf, you have been quite busy since your 2017 fellowship! Can you explain how you first devised Storykit, and why it is so important to spread an understanding of and love for Urdu?
Musharraf Ali Farooqi: Stories have always been more than a series of events with characters. They are a community activity, an auditory experience, and a learning mechanism. This is why storytelling is such a powerful experience, that even decades later, I still remember the occasions when our school teacher told us stories. It was my wish that children grow up with powerful, happy memories of listening to stories, and in the process engage with their language and folk heritage.
Mittal Institute: Storykit uses interactive storytelling and games to inspire a love of reading. Can you share more about the Storykit boxes themselves, and how you come up with the concept for the stories/games?
Musharraf Ali Farooqi.
Musharraf Ali Farooqi: We had the Storykit design in 2016, but it was not produced until 2017. Michelle Farooqi, Storykit’s co-founder, designed the box and illustrated the stories and the games. I retold the folktales for children, and created games based on the stories, each specific to a story’s plot.
Miniaturizing the book to fit a 4”x3”x1” box, packed with a board game based on the story, and printed with a QR code for listening to the story’s audio narration, made it very attractive to young children. Kids could take the story home in their pockets and play the board game with each other. During our pilot, parents of many out-of-school children would bring them to enroll them at the school, or promise to do so if the child was given a Storykit. The complete report of that pilot conducted for UNESCO can be read here.
Children in Pakistan playing with Storykits. Photo credit: Storykit (Private) Limited.
Mittal Institute: What are some of the program’s other successes? What is next for Storykit?
Musharraf Ali Farooqi: Last year, Storykit launched the Pakistan Spelling Bee in both English and Urdu languages, as two separate competitions. We had participation from over 6,500 students from 200-plus schools nationwide. We are now in the midst of launching the second edition, to be held from August to November this year. It will be a much larger event with regional championships being held in nine cities, and we are hoping to have participation from 2,000 schools and over 60,000 students.
Scenes from the Pakistan Spelling Bee. Photo credit: Storykit (Private) Limited.
This year, Storykit launched a Malala Fund-supported program to teach adolescent female students in Pakistan public schools how to write about their personal and educational journeys. We have conducted the program in two regions and have collected many moving stories about the challenges faced by the girls. To listen to these young girls recite the stories they have written, and learn the severe hardships they face in the pursuit of education, makes one want to change everything in society that creates an impediment in their path.
Their social lives are also difficult in most cases; there is severe poverty, even starvation. When we ask them to write about their lives, it is often the first time that they have had an opportunity to think about themselves and their lives. They told us how strange it felt to think about themselves for a change. Many girls broke down while narrating their stories. Often these girls come from such poor families that they do not think education can lift them out of the kind of severe poverty they face, and yet they are driven to educate themselves, just to be aware and knowledgeable about things.
We plan to create a network of these girls, so that they can help and support each other, and also use the network as a platform to sell products they make, or services they provide, with a view to help them achieve some degree of financial independence. We are also thinking of creating linkages between girls from public and private schools to facilitate this.
Participants in the Malala Fund. Photo credit: Storykit (Private) Limited.
Stories are the best way to localize information. Currently we are teaching internet safety, media literacy, and climate resilience through a customized Storykit we developed for Google Foundation. They agreed to let us create five stories based on the five principles of Google’s Be Internet Awesome internet safety and media literacy syllabus. With these five stories, we are able to convey the core principles of internet safety in one storytelling session, whereas the actual course took 35 sessions to deliver.
Mittal Institute: Can you talk about the schools that have piloted this program – what kinds of results are you seeing?
Musharraf Ali Farooqi: The first schools to pilot the program were public schools in Muzaffargarh district in Punjab, which was funded by UNESCO Pakistan. Then two private school chains bought the program. But it really grew big with the projects we have done for Google and Google Foundation. By June 2024, we would have delivered internet safety and media literacy training to 65,000 children across Pakistan, and thousands of teachers and parents.
Mittal Institute: How did your time at Harvard influence your work on Storykit?
Musharraf Ali Farooqi: I had a wonderful time at Harvard. I had access to some of the world’s best libraries. I was able to study the pedagogical ideas people from the education faculty are working on, and managed to formalize the structure for Storykit’s launch.
☆ The views represented herein are those of the interview subjects and do not necessarily reflect the views of LMSAI, its staff, or its steering committee.