14) Some Potential Undertakings (details from the Summer Newsletter highlights, July 2013)

Hitting the Big Time! The House of Flowers might be in the movies! Anna Lee, a Montessori teacher and head of school who presented at a TEDx talk about Montessori education, is in the process of attaining support to produce a documentary film about Montessori programs around the world. She is very keen on highlighting the House of Flowers as one of them, and a cameraman in Kabul may be heading to the House of Flowers soon to do filming!

Girls Education VideoIn addition, in May a team from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation visited the House of Flowers to film our educational program in their special on girls education in Afghanistan. The House of Flowers was shown as an exemplary model that supports girls education and their holistic development. We will let you know if/when we have a link to the program to see the video.

The Importance of Art The French art group Constellation, which has a history of doing art with children and worked with the House of Flowers some years ago, may be coming back for more! In this project, the Constellation staff brings art supplies and then facilitates an enriching and stimulating day of art with the children. The results are always beautiful. Once it happens and we have pictures, we’ll share them with you!

Montessori Materials in Dari – A Collaboration The Montessori pedagogical materials of charts and timelines provide the structure for teaching geography, botany and history. But the materials at the House of Flowers are in English. Benoit Dubruc of the Montessori community has very generously offered to produce a set of materials in Dari for the House of Flowers, but this requires careful translation of many technical terms, especially in geography.

Enter Sholeh Elhami: A long-time friend of the House of Flowers who visited the House in 2005 and founder of GISCorps, a volunteer geographers association, Sholeh is linking the House of Flowers with two Afghan geographers in Kabul. Besides the translation work that they will hopefully help with, we are very excited about the potential of their visiting the House of Flowers. It would be an extremely powerful example for the children to meet Afghan professors and professionals as many of our children are reaching the end of high school and will begin considering their career options.

University of Salerno Collaboration Two intensely dedicated supporters of the House of Flowers, Paola Valitutti and Susanna Fioretti, have made connections with a pedagogy expert at the University of Salerno in Italy. There is potential for this collaboration to result in support for further translation of Montessori materials, publication of Fatima and Qudsieh’s journals and writings about the Montessori teaching experiences in Kabul, and maybe even some small-scale training of other teachers.