“Travelogues Karachi” Holds Public Reading Event
1December 16, 2014 by Tom McKenna
by Mohsin Tejani (MA 01)
Director, The School of Writing
Karachi, Pakistan
Mohsin Tejani is the Founder and Executive Director of the School of Writing, Karachi, Pakistan, which works in collaboration with Andover Bread Loaf, BLTN, and Write to Change. After attending ABL ’97, he completed attended the Bread Loaf School of English from 1998-2001. He also organized the first International ABL Conference in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2000. For 25 years, Mohsin has worked as a teacher, teacher educator, master trainer, and school principal, and has assumed other leadership and managerial positions with different organizations. He now implements Bread Loaf-inspired writing programs across Pakistan for teachers and students through the School of Writing.
Travelogues Karachi is a 75-hour, after-school writing and photography program that introduces participating youth from socially disadvantaged backgrounds to creative expressionand provides opportunities for increased and effective use of new media. During in-class sessions and exposure trips around the mega city of Karachi, participants use creative methods of documenting their experiences and memories of a space through the use of photography and writing to produce a travelogue.
On December 2 and 4, 2014, two groups of 25 girls and 25 boys aged 15-18 from underpriviliged neighborhoods of Karachi presented their writings to an audience of 250+ at the Public Reading event. The majority of these kids had hardly ever written anything on their own, either in their own language(s) or in English, which to them is a foreign language. One hundred more kids will participate in the program until March 2015, which is implemented by the School of Writing, Karachi, Pakistan, for the Karachi Youth Initiative. The School of Writing is inspired by the Bread Loaf philosophy and runs in collaboration with ABL, BLTN, and Write to Change.
A testimonial from a youth volunteer of Travelogues Karachi:
“The School of Writing clears the way of difficulties for those students who couldn’t write. Now, they have started to write about every step that they are taking. Which help them to understand and experience their lives, where they would be able to repeat success and remove failure. The School of Writing: hats off for making your efforts and struggle with those boys and girls.”
For more information on Travelogues Karachi, see the the recent International Tribune article, as well as Travelogues Karachi’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/travelogueskarachi .
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This is amazing work and how proud I am to be a part of an organization that collaborates with others to make something like this happen. I wish more and more success to The School of Writing. Getting these young people to write in any language is an important step in offering them opportunities to find their voice. It’s once that voice is “found” that they have options for ways to use it. Change is on the horizon!