Tamer aims through this project at activating children’s libraries in the deprived areas of West Bank and Gaza Strip by providing activities promoting values of nonviolence, dialogue and self expression as well as helping them document or publish their productions.

Aware of the need for reading, the institute will develop some of its publications: the reading passport and the reading note books; into new version: “My Passport for Tales” which will urge children to read and listen to stories from elderly as well as the trainers and document them, then to write their own tales and share it with community.

By publishing their Tales through the Publishing Unit in Tamer, the children will have their first Tales published.  Lately, in April 2008, a group of 20 qualified facilitators in the West Bank have been trained by experts provided by the institute on skills of animating libraries through storytelling, since the theme of the National Reading Campaign this year is “One People, One Story”.

Those trainers are now in need for a Final-Step training to become fully equipped with skills which enable them to tell stories in a new innovative way which enable children in response to either imitate them or tell their own stories. Moreover, In Gaza, another group of facilitators have been trained on library animating skills with the support of UNICEF through the Project “Emergency Non-Formal Educational, Reactional Activities”, 2007.

The Project succeeded to enable 15 facilitators to employ their gained skills to train another 100 facilitators in Gaza Strip. The institute will be building on the same experience gained by those facilitators to train children in the libraries that the institute intends to activate in Gaza Strip. It is concluded that the potential created by the institute in previous projects in West Bank and Gaza will best serve the objectives of this project and will serve to solving the problems of the unlikely to read and express community and of the neglected libraries.   

In each library, each facilitator, with the help of the librarian, will establish a “Tales Club”, which he/she will train children on storytelling of existing books inside the library and on the 4-6 books provided during the project.

The “Tales Club” will include, within its conception, an incentive for children to join which is the “My Passport for Tales” which will urge children to read and listen to stories and document them. This passport is developed from the concept of reading passport known as part of Tamer’s activities for years. The Passport for Tales stands for the need to gather tales of the past which constitute the Palestinian cultural heritage and they also feature the identity of those children to include the historical dimension of Palestine within the cultural context.

The idea of this passport aims at connecting the child’s past with his/her present through reading and storytelling. Consequently, a base of national consciousness will be developed in children’s mind on how to develop their own tales about their lives as derived from a real Palestinian culture. The last ten pages in the passport will be free for the children to write their own tales and share it with community. In this book, the child will be able to build on his/her experience gained during the provided training through documenting it or creating another.    

Providing children with the space to experience new conceptions and means of expression through “My Passport for Tales” will eventually urge a good percentage of the participating children to develop their own Tales as they were able to form, after training, a base of national consciousness on how to create their own tales about their lives as derived from a real Palestinian culture.

The institute shall publish a book, similar to the “My First Book” experience, that contains more than one tale produced and illustrated by children and its title will be “My First Tale”. Based on the experience of “My First Book Competition”, the institute values the importance of first publications of children, since they push their enthusiasm towards further productivity. The published book will be distributed             

[1] www.euromedalex.org