“Your voice is life” … an initiative of the Junior Chamber International in Homs

“Due to the current conditions in the countries of the world because of the coronavirus pandemic and the need to adhere to quarantine at home, we have recently launched the “Your Voice is Life” initiative”to accommodate to our current situation incase we have to stay at home, we can travel and visit anywhere in the world through books,” Miss. Sherine Fares said in an interview with the Syria times e-newspaper.

She went on to say: “There is a large number of those who cannot enjoy this pleasure, such as the blind, illiterate, or even those who do not want to read, in addition to children who are unable to read. So the idea of audio recording books and novels, both for adults and children, has emerged.Thus, a number of volunteers began recording a variety of books and novels, which were later posted on the Facebook  to make them available to everyone.

Talking about the main goal of  the initiative, Miss. Rouba Alsharidi, Director of Curriculum Department at the initiative, said: “Among the most important goals of the initiative is motivating the young generation towards intellectual and cultural development by reading books in order to record them so the time they are at home is optimally used.

Contributing to empowering the Arabic language, is also an important goal we are working on this year in the community sector.

As for the third goal, and the most important one, is to provide  community service to contribute to the development and education of the blind and the illiterate, and even ordinary people who do not want to read on the one hand, as well as providing community service to mothers by providing them with a set of targeted audio stories for their children on the other hand”.

To know more about the nature of the selected books and novels, and the conditions for choosing these books, Miss. Rozanna al tarazi, director of the books and novels department at the initiative, explained: “The books and the recorded novels and stories were selected according to ethical, educational and developmental standards. In the first stage, a variety of books were selected and listed to be compared with all the lists provided by the rest of the provinces, so that the book is not recorded more than once.

After that, the volunteer is subjected to a performance test.   Upon completion of recording the book, the recording goes to the montage team as a before-final step in our initiative, which is a process that takes place after recording the sound or image and arranging it, i.e in the audio works: is to have a vision of the final form of the work. Thus, the book is ready to be posted on Facebook .”

Talking about their participation in the initiative, Miss. Rita Halabi, director of the initiative in the JCI in Lattakia, said: “We had  effective and distinguished participation in the initiative launched by the International Junior Chamber in Homs. We have recorded a variety of books, stories and novels, including 82 children’s stories, 6 adult novels, in addition to a number of novels for teenagers. The stories of heritage and myths have a distinctive presence in our recordings”.

“The culture of volunteer work has emerged in the best sense and finest meanings, as we have received absolute support for the implementation of this initiative by a group of volunteers, whether from JCI members, ordinary people or interested parties. One of the most noticeable support provided to our work was from an 11-year-old girl who recorded 27 short stories for children in English language.

Such support stimulates us more to work and enhances our faith in our abilities which need only encouragement and care”, she concluded.

It is worth noting that JCI in Sweida, Lattakia, Tartous, Damascus and Al-Wadi have partnered with JCI Homs in this initiative.

Interviewed by: Amal Farhat