AMMAN — Prime Minister Omar Razzaz on Tuesday expressed hope that the “We Love Reading” (WLR) initiative would play an influential role in changing negative practices and behaviours, including smoking and violence.

 

Attending a WLR’s conference on sustaining success, Razzaz said that the imitative has achieved “outstanding success stories” in the 52 countries applying its principles and objectives, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

 

WLR founder and director, Rana Dajani, said that encouraging children to read would contribute to changing their behaviour and enhancing their psychological and mental health.

 

Scientists from Brown University, the University of Chicago, New York University Abu Dhabi and Queen Mary University in London will be presenting working papers on WLR during the conference, Petra said.

 

Started in 2006 as an initiative to boost reading in urban and rural Jordanian communities, WLR has now reached 400,000 children in Jordan, opened around 4,000 libraries, delivered some 250,000 children books and conducted more than 140,000 reading sessions, Dajani has previously said.

 

The goal of WLR is to provide “read aloud programmes to foster love of reading among children, empowering communities through activism of local volunteers from MENA and the rest of the developing world”, according to its website.

 

WLR has published 32 books for children on topics such as ecology and environmental issues, social inclusion of refugees, women and people with disabilities.

 

In 2018, WLR received two international recognitions: the World Literacy Award and the Klaus Jacobs Award.