Heris

Harris Region

Geographical Location: Harris Region, East Azarbayjan Province
Age-group: 4-6 years old
Number of Children: 250
Number of Teachers: 12
Start Date: October 2012
End Date: November 2014

In October 2012, the project started by the sponsorship of the Society for Protecting the Rights of the Child. This project was conducted for 250 preschool children for two years.

Overview

After earthquake in Harris region in August 2012, the Read With Me team traveled to Tabriz for donating 300 books on 11-12 September 2012. Read with Me experts organized Reading Aloud sessions for children, and also trained 12 teachers from 12 villages` kindergartens for Reading Aloud, activities before and after reading and related artistic activities. Afterwards they evaluated the development of the project by surveying reports of the teachers.

Once again, on 15 December 2012, the experts traveled to the region for donating books and ensuring the correct implementation of project. By this point, 270 children in 13 villages were covered by Read with Me.

The experts held two workshops: “Living values” and “Environment”, to teach how to share these concepts with children. 12 teachers were trained and 50 bags containing 600 books on living values and environment were donated to kindergartens. In the beginning, the teachers faced some problems to transfer the meanings and concepts of the books to children because the children were bilingual.

Challenges

• Children’s Request for translation of phrases and books’ concept to Turkish
• Not being familiar with the meaning of some words and not recognizing sounds and inability to pronounce some certain words
• Lack of focus on the session, lack of cooperation in group activities
• Weaknesses in the story or telling their expression in Persian
• Lack of confidence

But after about one year, the teachers reported a lot of progress:

• It made the affected children feel more relief and happiness after the earthquake and helped them to forget it
• Children loved reading books and participated in all activities
• They understood the concepts and words more easily
• They explained events after Reading aloud
• The culture of Reading among families was increased
• In general, lingual, emotional, cognitive and social development were reported.