WFWP Jordan Benefits from the Peace Garden Cooperative Project

Written by: Fusayo Irikura

WFWP Jordan representatives recently were the recipients of a cooperative project funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (ICO) and organized by Cooperazione Internazionale (COOPI), an Italian NGO, and the Noor Al Hussein Foundation, a local NGO chaired by Queen Noor of Jordan. With COOPI focusing on character education and the Noor Al Hussein Foundation focusing on academic education, the joint project aimed to serve children living in impoverished areas of Jordan and took place at WFWP Jordan’s garden.

As part of the project, each student identified the needs in their community and then what they could do to meet those needs. Afterwards, each student made a presentation on what they came up with. One 15 year old girl who had never gone to school could not read or write Arabic. However, she wanted to try to make a presentation and she did. She had been so nervous but when she was done, she became extremely happy as she had never made such an achievement before and so for her it was such a special experience.

Next, all the students were divided into groups in order to discuss a specific project before all students decided on one project that they could implement on the ground together.

What they decided to do was to create a Peace Garden at the WFWP garden! The WFWP garden had a playground and other equipment but many pieces were old, in disrepair and dirty. Students cleaned all the walls and painted beautiful images and COOPI gave WFWP new swings for the garden. Their efforts truly transformed the space into a Peace Garden, or even a Dream Garden.

After that, the children cleaned the community by placing new garbage containers all around the neighborhood. Knowing that this was an initiative of the children was greatly moving.

WFWP Jordan was grateful for this ICO, COOPI and the Noor Al Hussein Foundation, and for the excitement and satisfaction expressed on the childrens’ faces. Our community’s children have not experienced such great opportunities, they do not know what abilities they have and so it brought joy to all to see them feel the happiness and confidence that came as a result of them being able to achieve and succeed in their vision of creating a Peace Garden at the WFWP garden.