MELA Notes

This article examines the institutional role of Nush-Afarin Ansari in the formation, consolidation, and long-term sustainability of the Children’s Book Council of Iran (CBC) as one of the most enduring civil-society cultural institutions in contemporary Iran. Drawing on an analytical reading of Ansari’s biography, the works of Parichehr Nasrin-Pay, and materials from the Oral History Project of the Children’s Book Council, the article argues that the CBC’s success resulted from the convergence of three key factors: multicultural formative experiences, professional librarianship, and an ethical approach to cultural management. Rather than offering a linear biographical narrative or an event-based institutional history, this study focuses on institutional mechanisms, the model of organized volunteerism, and the logic of “quiet power” in leadership.

The article also addresses the limitations and costs of this model, demonstrating that volunteer-based structures grounded in ethical commitment and human capital, while sustainable, are labor-intensive and difficult to replicate. Ultimately, it argues that the experience of the CBC should be understood less as a transferable operational model and more as an analytical framework for examining cultural institution-building under conditions of limited resources, political instability, and lack of formal support in Iran. This experience has endured not only in the organizational structure of the CBC but also in the collective memory of the pioneering women whose sustained participation shaped its institutional identity.