Katie’s Readers Arrives in Jordan
Rawan Risheq, working with the children where she so clearly belongs!
When my husband’s company transferred him and our family to Amman, Jordan I wasn’t too worried about our Katie’s Readers project, after all, my intention was to create a project in Katie’s name that anyone could be a part of, anywhere in the world; our move would certainly enable us to see just how feasible this idea was.
We arrived in Amman in August 2010 and began the settling in process for the 12th time! Katie’s Readers was on hold until our children were settled in their new school and our household shipment was delivered and unpacked. Well, at least delivered because as I began to unpack all the books that we had accumulated over the years of homeschooling, teaching English and neuro-developmental work, I finally decided that it was time to let them go. I had been holding on to these books and teaching materials in hopes that one day, when we finally settled somewhere in the world, I would open a learning centre of some description. I wasn’t sure what, but knew there was a good reason for me to keep hold of all this material and with each book I unpacked it became clearer to me that Katie’s Readers was the reason.
I felt a rush of excitement as I abandoned my unpacking (much to my husband’s dismay!) and began my search for a recipient of my donation. Google! What would we do without it? I was immediately directed to MADRASATI, an initiative by Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan, whose aim is to rejuvenate 500 of the poorest of the local public schools in the country. Perfect! I imagined that as tourism is such a big part of Jordan’s economy, that the English language would be an important component of the education here. I continued my research and found that Her Majesty Queen Rania is quite the modern monarch, with websites, twitter and facebook accounts and e-mail addresses to name but a few, it didn’t seem that hard to get in touch with her and so began my e-mail:
Dear Queen Rania………. ;-)
On October 4th I received a very positive e-mail from Madrasati’s Communications Coordinator Rawan Risheq, she seemed very excited about our project and was eager to meet with me regarding the donation of books. We arranged the appointment the following week and I immediately inherited a kaleidoscope of butterflies in my tummy, I was going to be meeting with ‘The Queen’s People” after all and for someone raised in The United Kingdom, anything to do with a Queen is pretty big!
As one who believes very strongly in Angels and knowing that this project was a simple act of love and not some concocted business plan I did not prepare a single thing for this meeting. I grabbed a handful of books with our Katie’s Readers stickers on them and whispered a very simple, “Let’s do this Katie” as I headed out to meet Rawan.
Rawan Risheq, my very first impression was “WOW, what an incredibly beautiful young woman!” It didn’t take me long to realise that the beauty was not just on the outside but also very deeply engraved in her soul. Born in Kuwait of Palestinian parents, Rawan spent the first half of her life in Jordan before moving to Canada with her family. After graduating from the University of Toronto she returned to Jordan to work with Madrasati as the communications coordinator. Her passion for those less fortunate and her strong belief in the power of art to heal and communicate across cultures and conflicts seeps through her pores and is highly contagious. We hit it off immediately!
Our brief meeting turned into about 3 hours of a non stop exchange of ideas. Rawan, having spent much time in the poorest of schools in Amman suggested that dropping books off to schools that were not equipped to neither store nor use the books would be almost a waste. That’s when we came up with the idea of gathering volunteers to go into the schools and give the children a ‘wholistic’ English language experience, playing with the children, teaching them songs, reading stories, making crafts, anything to inspire and motivate the children to want to learn the English language.
Rawan and I left that meeting with irrepressible energy that quickly turned into a green light from Danah Dejani, the director of Madrasati, and a community presentation that we gave to 3 different groups of expatriate women. In just a few weeks we had almost 30 applications for volunteers and were ready to take Katie’s Readers to the children.
We kept our 8 week pilot program to two schools, an all boys 1st grade class and an all girls 1st grade class. Our first few visits were both exciting and educational. We were greeted with great warmth and enthusiasm from the headmistress, teachers and of course the children of both schools and our volunteers were delighted to be part of something so positive and valuable. The hour long visits flew by and we found ourselves leaving behind very happy children each time we left. Teachers reported more excitement in their English classes and were continuously requesting training workshops so they too could teach English in this fun and interactive way.
We learned a lot about the developmental needs of the majority of the children who enter 1st grade with little or no preschool experience and we set about preparing more and more physical games for them to enjoy. Getting their bodies moving to prepare their brains for learning is a concept that is very new to the teachers we worked with, and yet they were extremely enthusiastic to learn more. Following the summer break we fully intend to take that enthusiasm to the next level, offering the teachers ongoing support, inspiration and motivation to get their classes moving and learning in fun and interactive ways. Watch this space!!! 
