Rana Dajani, We Love Reading
Reading is essential to development of children’s personality, imagination, and cognitive
skills. Arabia News estimated # of pages read for pleasure in the Middle East 0.5/year,
while for the USA it’s 11 books/year, negatively impacting education systems and
economic outputs of the region.
Children must learn to love and enjoy reading to reap its benefits. Many programs
attempted to increase reading levels by providing books have failed. Research has shown
that reading aloud is key in fostering the love of reading. In the West, this task is
fulfilled by parents, teachers or librarians. Although these individuals are present in
developing countries, the culture hasn’t embedded a sense of enthusiasm for reading
aloud, and many are illiterate or lack reading skills and habits.
Therefore, I have developed an innovative model that provides a practical, cost efficient,
sustainable, grassroots approach that involves women and the community to increase
reading levels among children 4-10 by focusing on the readaloud experience to plant the
love of reading. The We Love Reading (WLR) program constitutes training local
women to hold readaloud sessions in public spaces in their neighbourhoods where books
are routinely read aloud to children. This is our “library”. WLR chooses books that are
age-appropriate, attractive, neutral in content, in the native language of the child. In
addition to promoting the experience of reading, WLR empowers women readers to
become leaders in their communities, builds ownership in the children and community
members and serves as a platform for raising awareness on issues such as health and
environment.
The model can be replicated anywhere. It uses an existing common public space e.g. the
mosque or community center. It doesn’t need a bookshelf since all books are given out,
requiring only a collection of books that are read again and again. The woman who reads
aloud doesn’t have to be highly educated and trained. The women receiving training are
required to “pay it forward”, by sharing newly acquired knowledge and training another
woman to become a reader creating a domino effect. The trained reader is welcomed
because she is from the neighborhood. The community starts to respect women and
supports their roles as leaders and future change agents even within mosques. The
community also starts to invest in the collection, building ownership and responsibility of
the library. Reading has traditionally been considered boring or a waste of time outside
of academic or religious contexts. WLR is changing attitudes and letting people know
that reading is fun.
WLR is achieving impact at scale because WLR is a simple effective product that appeals
to its market of mothers and children. WLR depends on networks of women who already
resemble a movement to bring about social change through reading. WLR aims to
develop long term cultural change. WLR isn’t delivering services which need support
systems, it’s creating capabilities in hundreds of local women enabling them to be
creative for themselves. Organizations need hierarchs but movements need causes, shared
values, common goals to pull them together and give them a purpose, reading is the
means but the cause is to get young children to realize they can and should think for
themselves. The model is formulated in a way that each person can tailor the model to fit
their culture, their needs while maintaining the essence of the model, aiding in building
ownership to the project and sustainability.
WLR has trained 700 women, created 300 libraries, directly impacted 10,000 children
(60% girls) and indirectly impacted 50,000 individuals in Jordan, worked across sectorsbusiness local and private, government and civil society-to forge multi-stakeholder
relationships to advance the WLR model. WLR has spread to Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, UAE, Iraq, Tunisia, Turkey, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia, Uganda, Germany and
Azerbaijan. We have been contacted to implement WLR in NY City in marginalized
neighbourhoods.
We have developed 10 books for children that focus on energy and water conservation
and littering.
Neighborhood men from refugee camps encourage women library leaders. Mosque
clerics proudly open their doors to women to administer read-aloud sessions and donate
funds to buy books. Children have developed a culture of literacy discussing and
recommending books and authors to their friends. Older children continue to be readers.
Parents inform us that children exhibit higher self confidence and academics and they are
likely to buy and read books rather than toys.
WLR has tangible outcomes to transform, in a short period of time, a whole generation of
children into readers who love, enjoy, and respect books through the establishment of a
library in every neighborhood in the world, whose impact on development of society is
immeasurable.
Achievements
1. Awarded the 2009-2010 Arab world Social innovator from Synergos for the
project "we love reading"
2. One of the finalist for the Ahel Al- himmeh award. An initiative by Queen Rania of
Jordan to recognize individuals from the Jordan community who do volunteer work
for the community and have made a difference
3. Complimentary membership to the Clinton Global Initiative 2010 where we
pledged a commitment to open another 100 libraries in the next 5 years
4. We love reading has been chosen along with MIT open courseware to be a case in
the book Innovation in education commissioned by WISE Qatar foundation by
Charles Leadbeater. It was published in 2012
5. We have developed 10 children’s books on the theme of energy and water
conservation and antilittering.
6. Finalist for the WISE award 2014
Online resources:
www.welovereading.org
https://www.facebook.com/WLReading
Movies
Euronews
http://www.wise-qatar.org/content/rediscovering-love-reading-0
AlJazeera
http://www.welovereading.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83%3
Adr-rana-dajani-al-jazeera&catid=20%3Avideo&Itemid=132&lang=en
Ahel Himmeh
http://www.himmeh.jo/?q=node/2478
http://www.himmeh.jo/?q=node/2528
Talks
TEDxDeadSea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arLp-9nHcQQ
Clase Education 2012
http://clase.org.mx/2012/?perfil=rana-dajani
Articles
http://www.synergos.org/bios/ranadajani.htm
http://www.voanews.com/content/grassroots-libraries-promote-love-of-reading104096053/169494.html
http://www.gulftoday.ae/portal/56bed1b5-1d53-4f99-bcdf-a11902057d2a.aspx