We love Reading
Country Profile: Jordan
- Population:
- Official language:
- Poverty (population living on less than US$ 2 per day):
- Total Expenditure on Education as % of GDP:
6,731,000 (2011)
Arabic
1.6% (2011)
no official data available
- Access to Primary Education (last grade) –
Total Net Enrolment Rate:
98.0% (2011)
- Total Youth Literacy Rate (15-24 years):
Total: 99.1% (2011)
Male: 99.1% (2011)
Female: 99.3% (2011)
- Adult Literacy Rate (15 years and over):
Total: 95.9% (2011)
Male: 97.7% (2011)
Female: 93.9% (2011)
- Sources:
UNESCO Institute for Statistics
http://www.uis.unesco.org/DataCentre/Pages/countryprofile.aspx?code=JOR&regioncode=40525
Programme Key Information
- Programme Title: We Love Reading (WLR) - “A Library in Every Neighbourhood”
- Implementing Organisation: Taghyeer (National NGO)
- Languages of Instruction: Arabic and English
- Date of Inception: February 2006 - ongoing
- Programme Partners:
Partners in Jordan:
Hashemite University, Amman Municipality, Injaz‐Junior Achievement, Reliance Co., Ruwwad
Community Development Organization, and Dar Al Mahal (publisher), Business Development
Center, Drive to Read, Women Microfund, Arabic book Program/US embassy Jordan,
Children’s Museum Jordan, Zaha Cultural Center, Queen Rania Teachers Academy, Authors:
Abeer Taher, Taghreed Najjar
International Partners: Mother Child Education Foundation (ACEV) and Hüsnü Özyeğin
Foundation, Turkey; New Haven Public Library, New Haven, CT USA; World Innovation
Summit in Education, Qatar; Mercy Corps; Save the Children; Yale University; Neurosuite
Clinic, University of Chicago; Columbia University; International Board on Books for Young
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People (IBBY); Global Education Forum; International Reading Association; Scholastic
(Publisher); Clinton Global Initative; Thomson Reuter Trust
- Funding: Synergos, Ministry of Culture Jordan, Reliance, ARAMEX, US Embassy Jordan,
USAID ECODIT, Middle Eastern Partnership Initiative, Fetzer, Shoman Foundation, Microsoft,
LitWorld, Yale University; Publishers: Scholastic and Dar ALManhal
- Annual Programme Costs: 100,000 $
- Annual Programme Cost per Learner: 50 $
Country Context and Background
Because of the investment in social development programmes concerning family planning,
healthcare, and education Jordan has experienced comparatively rapid economic
development. In 2012 the kingdom has generated a GDP per capita of 6,037$, which can be
recognised as middle income (Wold Bank).
Until 2003 literacy levels in Jordan have been constantly improved. Afterwards the situation
became unstable with the lowest number of illiterates (273,873 adults) in 2007 and the
highest in 2010 (286,602 adults), whereas from 2010 to 2011 the number of illiterates has
decreased notably (163,948 adults) (UNESCO Institute for Statistics). One deciding reason for
being the country with the highest level of literacy in the Arab world is the commitment of
the Jordanian government to resolutely address their literacy challenges, which is why the
Adult Learning and illiteracy Elimination Programme (ALIEP) was launched already in 1952.
The country represents also a refuge for many people from surrounding countries, which
means that the number of illiterates increases parallel to the raising number of refugees.
Nowadays in Jordan education is compulsory for children at the age of 6 to 15, but recent
examples show, that reading does not seem to be valuated in Arab countries. According to
the Arabia News in general the Arab citizens reads only half a page per year for pleasure.
This alarmingly low figure corresponds to the result of UNESCO reports of 1991 and 2005 as
well as the US Working Paper for the G8 Summit in 2004, which stated that Arab readers
average 6 minutes reading in a whole year. Because of the relatively high literacy rate in
Jordan it is unlikely that insufficient reading skills are the reason for these survey results.
Chances are that little reading practice or a lack of reading habits cause that people are not
interested in it, because evidence has shown that reading aloud is key in fostering the
pleasure of reading (Trelease, 2013). The fact that a literate society is essential for economic
development and social integration, has still to become aware for the Jordan society.
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The Organisation
Taghyeer is a Jordanian non-governmental organisation that works through various
programmes and education in particular on literacy to develop, train and encourage women,
young people and children in the fields of education, particularly literacy; entrepreneurship,
and health in order to change their attitudes to become responsible citizens who can make a
difference in their lifes. The model of We Love Reading (WLR) was developed in Jordan and
spread out to other countries throughout the world. Many of them belong to the Arab
world. Rana Dajani, the founder of this programme, is an associate professor and previous
Director of the Center for Studies at the Hashemite University of Jordan.
Programme Overview
WLR aims to positively impact children, adolescents and their families throughout Jordan
and the Arab world by creating a generation of children that love and enjoy reading books.
This shall be achieved through the establishment of a library in every neighbourhood in
Jordan, which is supported by women, trained by Taghyeer in reading aloud. With it they can
read to children in their local communities from 4 to 10 years old, utilising age-appropriate
reading material.
The target group of the programme are children, adolescents (15-24 years), adults, families,
women and girls, but the organisation also addresses a great number of minority groups and
people in need. Those are on the one hand out-of-school children, unemployed and poor
people. On the other hand minorities such as ethnic groups, migrants and nomads as well as
refugees, religious communities, and inmates.
The organisation considers reading as shared value and mean to achieve the common goal
to mobilise adults (as reading volunteers) as well as young children (as participants in
reading sessions) and make them realise that they are responsible for themselves. Therefore
the approach is to invest in capacity building of the young generation to build a foundation
for further personal development. We love Reading owns a web page, which functions also
as platform to support the dissemination of the model to other regions
(http://www.welovereading.org/).
Aims and Objectives
Main aim:
- Bring about social change through reading
Objectives:
- Create and foster a pleasure for reading primarily among the young generation
- Change attitutes and promote the importance of reading
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-
Support a gradual and natural development of women leadership within the
community
Substitute the role of parents in reading to their children
Introduce and sustain the concept of volunteerism among young people
Programme Implementation
Introduction
The “library” as learning environment is
established on an existing and common
public space. This location should be
easily accessible for neighbourhood
children, which is the reason why mostly
mosques, but also other community
centers were selected to be appropriate
institutions for the reading sessions. The
book collection consists of as few or many
books as can easily be gathered through
donations
from
individuals
or
organisations. The children love to hear the same story over and over. A read-aloud session
is held every weekend and afterwards the books will be given to the children for reading at
home.Later the books will be returned so that other children can borrow them..
Mothers have become involved in WLR as
well, since they support the readers and
attend reading sessions in the mosque as
well as they read out to their children at
home. Yet some children drag their
parents out of bed on the weekend to
attend one of the storytelling sessions.
Thereby children directly deliver a positive
attitude to their parents torwards reading.
Books Read to the Children
The books being read are written in the mother tongue and from the same cultural
background of the children, thus the stories are easy to understand and show the children
how to build positive attitudes and apply best practices in their every day life, which is
hoped to be transmitted to their parents and the community. This happens for example if a
mother reads a book about a boy who conserves water that her child took at home. When
the mother does not conserve water the boy will remind his mother that she just read him a
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story that shows she should conserve
water. Moreover they are ageappropriate and fiction books. Recent
scientific research published showed
that adults who read literary fiction were
more empathetic than those who read
nonfiction, or did not read at all (Bal and
Veltkamp, 2013; Kid and Castano, 2013).
The majority of the book collection deals
with fictitious stories. In addition to
reading aloud the children are
performing activities related to stories in the book. In partnership with the U. S. non-profit
organisation ECODIT more stories about environment and conservation of water and energy
will now be developed and used for the reading sessions in Jordan.
Recruitment and Training of Volunteers
There are diverse possibilities how to engage as a volunteer for WLR, such as becoming a
reader, advocating for reading, volunteering to organise the library and outreach interest.
Simply reading to their own children involves parents as well, as we consider them as
volunteers if they attend the WLR read aloud sessions and read to their children the books
the children take home.
Reaching the Reading Volunteers
The first step of the process is to recruit individuals (they could be male or female and of any
age), who meet the requirements. They are recruited through word of mouth, youth
organisations, women organisations, website, social media, public events etc.
Requirements of the Reading Volunteers
The volunteers recruited do not have to be highly educated, they just have to fulfill simple
requirements, which is to love children and reading and to be willing and motivated to
volunteer, which implies to maintain a responsible, passionate and dedicated attitude
towards their work. But they also have to be part of the same neighbourhood as the
families, so that they are trusted and welcome.
Content of the Training
Taghyeer is in charge of the training for the volunteers, which is offered three times per year
(each one takes two days). The focus of the training is on capacity building in multiple areas
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including teaching, communication, confidence building and soft skills. The participants also
learn about time management, planning and financing. They are instructed how to set up
and run libraries as well as how to read aloud.
Specific thematic areas during the leadership training are
basic literacy and numeracy skills, advanced literacy, life
skills, family literacy, intergenerational learning and gender
as well as supporting literate environments and sustainable
community development. Talking about values and
behaviour a training on creative thinking and time
management encourages open-mindedness to other
perspectives and outlooks on life.
This includes learning how to formulate persuasive
arguments to defend their perspective and how to
internalise criticism positively as well as contribute to
debates raised during the training.
Training Methodologies
A self-developed curriculum and manual are used as guidelines for the facilitators for the
leadership training. The volunteers are trained by the programme initiator, together with a
professional trainer, specialised on reading aloud training.
The training is highly interactive including
debates, presentations, and visual and
breathing exercises dealing with the
leadership role of the woman in the
community through the library. The
participants practice reading aloud in front
of each other. This is supported by the
training of public speaking skills, eye
contact, controlling of the voice and body
language. Moreover the women are invited
to work in teams with the help of a case study, share perspectives, opinions and needs to
work together to find solutions to challenges. Empathy, respect and acceptance are core
values, transmitted in the training. They shall enable the women to teach approaches such
as if a person disagrees with somebody, he or she can at least appreciate the background of
the counterpart and respect different opinions. This attitude fosters inclusion and
acceptance among the trainees who in turn become role models for others.
A multiplier effect is secured through the peer to peer training as leadership women, who
received a training already, are asked to pass on their knowledge and teach other women,
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which is also how new volunteers were approached. Through this fairly efficient process at
the end only low resources are needed and in total more librarians can be trained.
After implementing the model over a three months period the readers are assessed through
personal reflections and diaries shared during a one day long meeting. At the end of the
training they get a certificate. Before or after selecting eligible readers there is no test
conducted.
Training Fees
Taghyeer used to conduct free trainings, but not every person trained decided to become a
librarian at the end. In order to identify those individuals who are more dedicated, the
organisation started to charge a fee for the training. This amount could be spend on
improving the efficiency of the programme, which also led to better libraries on the long run.
Monitoring and Evaluation of the Programme
Every reader has to fill in a survey, which is conducted annually. It includes statistics on the
number of participants, disaggregated by gender, the amount of stories read, the frequency
and duration of the sessions.
In collaboration with the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) and
the University of Chicago the effect of using books on behavioral change is currently
assessed. The progress is locally, regionally and internationally monitored by a follow up as
well as by reports from the voluntary readers, who are writing a diary and share their
successes and challenges on facebook (https://ar-ar.facebook.com/WLReading). Their
feedback during and after the training is incorporated into the training and will be used to
improve the process and remove irrelevant parts to design a more simple but effective
programme.
The impact of the programme is assessed by qualitative studies which include focus group
discussions and interviews with parents, children and readers. WLR members organise visits
to the libraries as well, where they take pictures, interview the volunteers who run the
libraries, the parents and the children. At the moment WLR is developing a monitoring and
evaluation platform of the exisiting libraries in collaboration with Columbia Unviersity, USA.
WLR has produced a study report that describes the impact of reading on behavior change
towards the environment in children. Another study report shows an 84% improvement in
leadership and social entrepreneur skills in adults who have particapted in the training and
implemention of the We Love Reading library in their neighbourhood.
WLR is currently performing a study on the effect of reading on empathy in children.
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Unfortunately there have not been made any qualitative evaluations on the improvement of
literacy skills. We Love Reading measures its success by how may children it gets involved in
reading groups. Through individual interviews with children WLR found out that the sessions
have a long lasting impact on young people and influence them in decisionmaking
throughout their adulthood.
Programme Impact and Challenges
Impact and Achievements
International Recognition
The programme has spread out to 14 countries worldwide (among them are Azerbaijan,
Egypt, Germany, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Malaysia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Tunisia,
Turkey, Uganda and United Arab Emirates) and has reached 100,000 individuals throughout
the world.
Impact on Children
Children have developed their own culture of literacy among themselves, which means they
are discussing and recommending books and authors to each other. They continue to read
and parents state that their children exhibit higher self-confidence and academic skills, even
that they are likely to buy and read books rather than toys. Most of the children recognise
and are able to name authors, other than their parents. The young generation is encouraged
to deploy the acquired reading qualities in their everyday life afterwards. Even older
children, who do not attend the sessions anymore are still readers. The programme also
stimulates creativity in children - especially girls.
We Love Reading distributed copies of English books to different neighbourhoods, with the
result that in those areas in Jordan whithout libraries, where children accordingly had not
been read to on a routine bases, children did not read the distributed books, because they
felt intimidated and considered reading as a burden. In contrast in neighbourhoods where
libraries were established, children were enthusiasticly reading the books, which is
representing an indication for a succesful programme.
Impact on Individuals and the Community
Reading has traditionally been considered as boring or a waste of time outside of academic
or religious contexts. WLR is showing people that reading is valuable, even as an activity in
leisure time. The community also starts to invest in the book collection, to foster book
ownerships and responsibility regarding the library.
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Alone in Jordan WLR has trained 700 women, created 300 libraries and directly impacted
10,000 children (of which 60% are girls) and indirectly reached another 50,000 individuals
(January 2014). The overall impact on the development of society is immeasurable.
However, the interviews with children and qualitative assessments in collaboration with the
University of Chicago and USAID have shown that in a short period of time the attitude of
young participants was transformed into enjoying reading as well as respecting or even
loving books and really taking advantage of the existence of a library.
Impacts on Boys and Men
Boys who participate in the We Love Reading sessions learn to respect the leadership
position of women. We Love Reading’s assumption is that empowering women is not just
about educating women but also educating males to support and encourage them. This
model is innovative in targeting boys as well, so that they grow up as supportive sons,
husbands, brothers and fathers.
Impact on Parents
The model directly impacts parents who attend the read aloud sessions. Thanks to We Love
Reading activities, parents become more familiar with the importance of reading aloud to
their children.
Impact on Woman and Girls
Every woman in charge of the library and reading sessions becomes a partner in the
development of the programme and accordingly people start to respect women and support
their roles as leaders. Also in the mosque they are accepted as mediators for advanced
literacy skills. Female Palestinian refugees yet experienced that men from their
neighbourhood encouraged them in their new leadership position and people felt that those
women can make a difference in their communities.
The training enables young women in their leadership role to critically examine their
environment and identify problems in their community and come up with solutions. For
example in one neighbourhood the women brainstormed how to get rid of the garbage and
as result saved money so that they created their own compost pile. Older women taking part
in the programme feel a sense of fulfilment, because they have something to offer by
serving their community. This can be recognised in the example of an older woman, whose
children were all grown up saying reading in the mosque to the children of the community
made her happier and she felt a sense of fulfillment.
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Because of their knowledge gained through reading also other literature beside children’s
books, their leadership position plays an important role in decision making within the
community. This instigates change and can be considered as impact of the programme in the
longer term.
In the longer term, the programme advances a skilled and creative generation of girls that
will become empowered mothers, while enhancing female volunteerism, independence,
advocacy, and redefining women’s role, ownership, and respect.
Challenges
The biggest problem facing most projects working on raising awareness in developing
countries is accessing the grass roots. Clearly it is not possible to train all the parents to read
aloud and show passion for reading, but We Love Reading uses the grass roots approach to
build capacities in one person of each neighbourhood who reads to children so that they in
the long run secure the passion for reading within the next generation. Reading is used as
means to achieve that children are capable to become independent thinkers and make them
aware that people can learn from others while maintaining their pride in their culture and
heritage.
Another major challenge within this programme is raising funds and finding appropriate
books for the children. The books are bought through grants or donated by orgnaisations. All
books are previously screened by WLR to make sure they are age appropriate and of high
quality.
At the beginning it was hard to make the community believe in the positive impact of the
programme in a longer term. Before the sessions started children hesitated, because they
recognised WLR as another educational programme. After listening to the stories and
having fun they attented the sessions more often and brought all their friends and relatives
with them.
As the number of children in the community attending the sessions is increasing WLR needs
continously new volunteers, but it is hard to recruit them. Besides before the training starts
many of the participants lacked proficient reading skills. WLR supports these learners a lot in
improving their reading skills. The volunteers had to show high commitment in practising to
read children‘s books before the read aloud sessions with family or friends. As minor
challenge there may still be a slightly negative stigma towards illiteracy.
Innovation
The WLR model is innovative at multiple levels:
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1. Storytelling as deeply in the arab culture routed systematic approach is harnessed to
motivate people to practice reading.
2. The idea of community involvement and volunteerism is a new concept in Islamic
Development Bank (IDB) member counties - especially for women.
3. The model also serves as a platform for dissemination of awareness programmes
including hygiene, conservation of energy, water, etc.
4. It has been shown through research that a mother can stimulates good habits in a
daily life of her young child (for example on health and conserving the environment)
if she reads to the child regularly
5. The WLR model is also unique in that it is sustainable through the ownership of the
women who own their libraries, which is why all the credit goes to her and not to We
Love Reading. This empowers the women at the same time and helps them to
overcome the dominancy of men in mosques by taking over leadership roles for the
libraries in the mosque.
Lessons learned
WLR is stating that every person who starts a library helps them to advance the model by
sharing their personal experience. As the programme is continuously growing, the social
entrepreneurial aspect of our training is gaining importance lately.
We Love Reading has considered providing and reading books as an important foundation
which may enhance literacy, but the key to improve literacy is building reading capacities
and story telling experiences.
For the volunteers it became crucial to talk about their experiences they made during the
story telling sessions. As they live in different places an appropriate tool for this exchange is
a facebook platform. Hence more ideas and suggestions can be raised and room for
improvement can easier be identified.
Sustainability
There are certain activities conducted to maintain a sustainable financial situation, such as
training services and selling of books, donations and fundraising activities and mosque
leaders have donated money to buy books for the libraries. Through a capacity building at
the level of the local citizens the model works cost efficiently, because the programme uses
and leverages local resources such as volunteers, venues and books instead of relying on
external resources and ideas, what turns the local community into a stakeholder within the
success of the library.
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The WLR approach is easily replicable, particularly in rural areas as there are only a few
requirements such as a trained reader, a small selection of books, a comfortable location
and enthusiastic participants.
Moreover WLR has developed and maintained diverse partnerships locally and regionally as
well as internationally.
In order to advance the WLR model the organisation also established multi-stakeholder
relationships through working across local and private business as well as government.
Furthermore recently the model is being adopted in the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan as a
way to not only fostering the love of reading among children, but also to help them to cope
with the frustrations and hardships of camp life. The libraries support a network for
communication among library leaders and camp authorities and provide a ground where to
connect with each other.
Contact details
Rana Dajani
Founder and Director of Taghyeer
55 Abdel Hameed Badees Amman Jordan
rdajani@welovereading.org
www.welovereading.org
Sources
Kidd, D. C.; Castano E. (2013) Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind. Science Vol.
342 (6156) pp. 377-380.
Leadbeater, C. (2012) Innovation in Education: Lessons from Pioneers Around the World.
Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing.
P.M. Bal; M. Veltkamp (2013) How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental
Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation. PLoS ONE 8(1).
J. Trelease, J. (2013) The Read-aloud Handbook. 7th ed. Pinguin Books: New York.
We love Reading (2010). A Library in Every Neighbourhood.
Available at: http://www.welovereading.org/ (Accessed 17 March 2014).
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Photos
- Example of a work sheet, dealing with environmental topics -
- Books before sorting and distributing them to the volunteers -
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