Education, Outreach & Awareness Programs

The EEP provides a wide range of opportunities and experiences that introduce children to their rich history of different civilizations that inhabited Jordan. This approach contributes to instilling a sense of pride in the participants’ identity and heritage as heirs of former cultures and civilizations. The Education and Engagement Program introduces the culture (peoples, traditions and practices) and history of Petra in specific, and Jordan more generally. It also introduces ecology and the importance of protecting biodiversity and tackling threats facing sites and cultural and natural heritage as a whole. The program is engaging and fun, as it employs a student-centered and hands-on learning approach. EEP is inquiry-driven and skill-based; through guided student-centered interactions among the community of learners, they have the opportunity to engage in learning about their culture while employing collaborative work, research, thinking and reflection, visualization, questioning, creative and self-expression. The program empowers children and youth with new skills that support their personal and academic growth and help them become a community of learners and future change agents aware of their identity, cultural heritage, and the importance of preserving it.

This program helps children develop a range of skills to express, reframe, and direct their emotions and creativity through artwhile learning to become more communicative and expressive..

Children’s personal and creative skills are empowered through art and language skills.

building on the interrelationship between language, identity and heritage, we developed the “Arabic Language and Heritage” program, which provides participants with a mixed knowledge of language and heritage. This program is directed towards non-native speakers.

Through this program, youth with simple or intermediate sight, movement, hearing, or intellectual disabilities have access to an outstanding educational program focusing on developing identity and pride in their cultural heritage. In addition, the PWD inclusive program significantly helps integrate PWDs with their larger community.

Created to expand PNT’s audience, the YHC is designed to provide Jordanian children and youth with activities related to cultural heritage through a less intensive delivery set-up that incorporates components of tangible and intangible heritage. Participants are introduced to conceptual ways of thinking about heritage; the sum total of their heritage is an amalgam of the different periods that make up the history of Jordan and how the various time frames have contributed to other aspects of their culture. Such ideas are introduced to create awareness that heritage is not only defined by monuments but also by social activities, civic sense, crafts, and culinary traditions tied specifically to Jordan and the region at large. In addition, hands-on activities emphasize current social practices (such as littering or graffiti on cultural monuments) and discuss how they can instigate positive change for the future. Most sessions are school-based but include field trips to heritage or archaeological sites.

The ICH is a series of workshops that aim to empower talented youth to develop handicrafts and provide them with a high-quality program that reconnect them with intangible cultural heritage using interactive and hands-on activities. It enhances their understanding of how they can invest in their talents to create a future source of income and maintain the balance between cultural heritage preservation and economic development.

Created to expand Petra National Trust’s (PNT) audience, the Young Explorer’s Club is designed to provide Jordanian children with activities related to cultural heritage to instill a sense of identity and pride in our cultural heritage. It aims to demonstrate to children that learning about Jordan can be fun and engaging. Children go on a virtual tour of the World Heritage Site of Petra and explore its rich culture by engaging in multi-sensory experiences in sculpting, pottery making, and painting. They have firsthand experience making mosaics and Neolithic jewelry, enhancing their creativity while increasing concentration, attention, memory, and hand-and-eye coordination. In addition, the program allows the children to engage in artistic stimulation activities through wall painting, weaving, and creating dioramas.

The Training of Trainers Program (TOT) empowers teachers to take ownership and play a vital role in implementing cultural heritage education and awareness programs for local children and youth.

Participating teachers, who previously have received little formal training in educational methodology, have the opportunity to build their capacity through our program. The workshop activities develop a deeper understanding of the subject material while enhancing their confidence to present interactive, collaborative teaching and learning experiences. The training also provides teachers, who are from a multi-disciplinary background, the skills and knowledge to give presentations about cultural heritage, be more proactive in educating local children about the significance of archeological sites, and integrate the local communities in the preservation of the archaeological sites.