We love Reading
Country Profile: Jordan
- Population:6,731,000 (2011)
- Official language:Arabic
- Poverty (population living on less than US$2per day):1.6% (2011)
- Total Expenditure on Education as % of GDP: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
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, AmmanMunicipality, 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 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).Onedeciding 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 Arabcitizens 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.
The Organisation
Taghyeer is a Jordanian non-governmental organisation that works through various programmes and education in particular on literacyto 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 previousDirector of the Center for Studiesat 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 Taghyeerin 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 arechildren, 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 supportthe dissemination of the model to other regions (
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
-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 locationshould 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 collectionconsists 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 weekendand afterwards the books will be given to the children for reading at home.Later the books will bereturned 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 readsa book about a boy who conserves waterthat her child took at home. When the mother does not conserve water the boy will remind his mother that she just read him a story that shows she should conserve water.Moreover they are age-appropriate 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 ECODITmore 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 impliesto 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 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 ashow 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 participantspractice 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, 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 behavioralchange is currently assessed. The progress is locally, regionally and internationallymonitored by a follow up as well as by reports from the voluntary readers, who arewriting a diary and sharetheir successesand challenges on facebook ( 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 developinga monitoring and evaluation platformof 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.
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[UIA1] countries worldwide (among them areAzerbaijan,Egypt,Germany, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Malaysia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda andUnited 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 eachother. They continue to read and parents state that theirchildren 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 acquiredreading 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 whithoutlibraries, 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 librarieswere 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 isshowing people that reading is valuable, even as an activity in leisure time. The community also starts to invest in the book collection, to fosterbook ownerships and responsibility regarding the library.
Alone in Jordan WLR has trained 700 women, created 300 libraries and directly impacted 10,000 children (of which 60% are girls) and indirectly reachedanother 50,000individuals (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 haveshown 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 existenceof 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.