Jordan Let's Live

My name is Rana Rizkallah born 1971, I got a B.A degree in Economics major and Business Administration minor, also I have a B.A & Master degree in music, all my degrees are from the Jordanians Universities here in Jordan.

I have a 28 years working experience,  in operation, administration, music and social development, through this time I got the qualified experience for community development and growth, by executing many projects concerning economic development, tourism, charity, women and youth empowerment projects targeting disable persons, and projects supporting the community.

My passion is service for my society, so I established recently Turath a non-profit company to achieve more project and create positive impacts on the society locally, regionally and ultimately internationally. 

I established Jordan Let's Live, by utilizing technology to fulfill human needs in the most easy and feasible way to reach as many stakeholders as possible through social media channels like Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram. 

Its a free voluntary initiative started in 2016 and succeeded beyond my imagination. 

JLL is about developing and delivering a better Jordan first, then the region and ultimately the globe. JLL is the umbrella for initiatives starting with offering different educational and employment opportunities through Jordan Let's work, we support entities by sharing their events through Jordan Events, supporting tourism food & beverage sectors through Jordan Let's Eat & Jordan Let's Check In, empowerment, vocational, and education for disable and all members through My Music, reserving culture and History through Haddarah (Civilization), helping people of need Jordan Let's Help, most importantly these platforms reached and helped large number of stakeholders regardless of their location.  

There are some major problems we are facing in our community, which we  tackled, like Economical development and stability: offering good working opportunities, good training. Tourism: tourism constitutes around 13% of the national income, this sector needs support to encourage local tourism and attract international tourists.Empowerment & Education: many members in our community specially women, youth and disable needs special program to offer them better opportunities in life. Environment: climate change and other related issues to environment. The mentioned problems  are affecting the whole community, including different age groups, our project is addressing each problem and offering opportunities and solutions to each one, for example Jordan let's work offers job opportunities and training for stakeholders, while Jordan let's Eat and Check In and Haddarah offers voluntary visits by big number of people (paying from their own pockets) to visit all outlets, hotels and historical places, promote them, give them a genuine review to help them raise their standards and services, creating local trips to encourage tourism, on the other hand My Music offers vocational training, education, music therapy for disable persons, all the above activities takes into consideration the environment's needs and try to adhere to it. 

Jordan Let's live run by Turath non profit company, the umbrella for initiatives created on Whatsapp Facobook and Instagram since 2016:

1)Jordan Let's Work: 10 daily vacancies, jobs opportunities posted, training courses to scale up the qualifications of the stakeholders, reaches 1000 participants 20% got jobs. 

2)Jordan Let's Eat& Check In (10000 participants): we organize two voluntary visits monthly, (around 30-40 participants each visit pay from their own pockets) to different restaurants, hotels, historical locations,and entertainments venues,we do a review and convey it to the owners for the betterment of the outlets the positive comments are posted on social media to encourage others to visit, till now we visited 100 restaurants 25 hotels 20 historical locations, we are looking for empowering dis-privileged women by supporting small food productions.

3) Haddarad ( Civilization) (60 participants) : historical trips,  conducting monthly history lectures, reserving traditional activities, a future project workshops of traditional customs making.

4)My Music (Musicati):vocational, educational, musical training enabling dis-privileged talented youth, children, disable and women for new opportunities, offers music therapy session to disable people, creates peace, increase awareness of the community. 

5) Jordan Let's Help: offers help to needy people, vocational training  to create employment.

The project serves a multi number of stakeholders in the community, it serves different age groups and different needs, there are major problems that our community faces, and through tackling them other needs occurs, a simple survey to each category of stakeholders concerning a matter will give us a clear idea of their needs, and that what we are doing, also a satisfaction survey is done too, to see the results and the impact of the project. Some of the community members that can afford working voluntary already enrolled in the project, unfortunately I have very limited financial resources to hire a big team to run this project, so with some members of the community which considered as my partners now are ruining it voluntary.

The project is offering them Economical stability, peace, awareness, supporting tourism, fulfilling their needs, offering better life.

The projects creates jobs opportunities to all sectors of the community, with different qualifications, with Jordan let's Work posting daily vacancies and job opportunities covering all sectors from junior to senior jobs, and vocational ones. Also in the project we offer empowerment, awareness, better life opportunities,emphasizing history and culture identity, supporting tourism and helping people in need.

All the above relates directly to the Elevate Prize,because the stakeholders are influenced and supported by it.

The idea of the project was always on my mind and but didn't know how to implement it, until one day I was on the treadmill walking thinking of how to help and support restaurants since I love food, and at that time the social media was getting very popular and widespread,so I had the idea of starting a Whatsapp group with my friends and start sharing information about food, restaurants, also arrange visits, and here I started and this group was welcome by my friends, we started 40 persons and now we are around 10000,and the same concept I did for the other initiatives and all were welcome and spread, so I started tackling our community problems and reaching them through social media and some of my friends and other people got involved in the project voluntary and doing their best to help and support, and here I am with great project,hoping one day will get the adequate financial support to spread in order to cover and reach all stakeholders of our country.  

This project as explained touches major problems at our community, problems when it is solved makes a difference, create happiness and stability. its my personal motive and passion that drives me to continue this project and try to make it bigger and more effective,  and the most important I wish when I was younger I found someone like Jordan Let's Live project, that offered a helping hand and encouragement to solve the problem that we faced back then, this is my main motive helping supporting people in need, doing what I wished someone could have done to me....

My major skills are leadership, problem solving, patience, good communication, team work, good vision, my background as mentioned before I have a 28 years experience in operation, administration include Human resources purchasing, project managing, and now I am the Executive Director of Turath for Social development a non profit company.

My passion for service and community development drives me to always involve myself in such projects, my leadership qualifications and experiences allows me to drive these project to success, the project I am presenting here is already established 4 years ago and succeeded beyond my imagination, I wish we can support more and more so it can serve and reach big number of community members and solve more and other problems which will create better opportunities to them, but we are working in our limited financial ability.

In my career path I have encountered many obstacles, one of them was  teaching music to conservative communities. Here in our country some communities don't have the culture of learning music and knowing the importance of it, I had a project at a school which they refused to let me in to teach, because music is forbidden by their culture, I didn't gave up, I had many meeting with the Ministry of Education and the Headmaster of the school trying to solve the problem, then I came to an idea, in these communities they only sang  national songs and religious chanting, and from here I entered and started slowly moving from the national songs to old songs that their parents knew and love, and this made me closer to the parents which helped me a lot because the parents plays an important role in encouraging their children, it was a successful project I taught 40 girls and we had a concert at the end of the project with around 100 parents and family relatives clapping and enjoying their singing.  

I have finished my first BA degree in Economics in 1992, and worked for around 11 years in operation and administration field, then I started chasing my dream of studying music, and so I started my second BA in music in 2003, I used to go to my work and enrolled in evening music class at the college, I was overwhelmed with work duties and home works. After I finished my music BA I was offered the position of Administrative Manager at the National Music Conservatory since I am a specialist in administration and musically qualified, I started my job working and teaching music, it has been around 10 years now,  I got my master degree  while  working, this affected positively many of the people around me and all thought highly of how I could manage  and how I chased my dream, my experience reflected on a girl who because of her poor living conditions and conservative family, she was convinced that she can't play music while she loved it so much, after hearing my story, how under all pressure I got my degrees, she pursed music learning and now she sings in her school band and many public events.

We have set mission vision and goals for the project to be accomplished, roles of the voluntaries are distributed upon their qualifications and passion, we established a clear communication between stakeholders and the management of the group to get feed back and evaluate the project which help us to review and develop our work.

And the most important our project "Jordan Let's Live" is an easy free technological access for all stakeholders regardless of gender age location, which fulfill their requirements, needs and opens new opportunities and better life path wherever they are.

Jordan Let's Live (JLL) project with its initiatives is a community service project offering services and fulfilling needs by concentrating on utilizing technology to fulfill human needs in the most easy and feasible way to reach as many stakeholders as possible through social media channels like Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram, starting with Economical development and stability: through Jordan let's Work we are offering good working opportunities, good training and this will lead to stable economical community. Tourism: tourism constitutes around 13% of the national income, this sector needs support to encourage local tourism and attract international tourists, so through Jordan Let's Eat & Check In & Haddarah & Jordan Event we offer voluntary visits by big number of people (paying from their own pockets) to visit all outlets, hotels and historical places, promote them, give them a genuine review to help them raise their standards and services, creating local trips to encourage tourism, support entities by sharing their events and this will offer more working opportunities and will lead to better chances in tourism for the stakeholder and stable economy.

Empowerment & Education: many members in our community specially women, youth and disable needs special program to offer them better opportunities in life so through My Music we offer vocational training, education, music therapy for disable persons, all the above activities takes into consideration the environment's needs and try to adhere to it and this will lead too better future for stakeholders.   Environment: climate change and other related issues to environment.

 In our limited capacity we established a simple survey for each initiative filled by the stakeholders to evaluate our work and this helped us a lot on how the project is going and what to improve.

The current number we are serving now 15000.

In the next year we are targeting 30000.

In five years 480000. 

Jordan Let's Live has different initiatives under its umbrella, following is a list with their impact goals:

1) Jordan Let's Work: reducing unemployment of around 40%-60% of the JLW stakeholders number,  well qualified and trained stakeholders, with the right degrees and qualifications. This can be implemented by creating a large updated data base of vacancies from different companies and institutions  holding consistent training and workshop to raise up the qualification of the stakeholder and granting authorized certificates.

2)  Jordan Let's Eat & Check In & Events: Helping in increasing the income of tourism, qualified hospitality employees, women empowerment project,  good services and high standards food productions in F&B sector, major tourism projects attracting tourists locally and internationally, adequate training, good systemic evaluation for F&B sector followed by certified certificates, which needs financial support and marketing plans.

3) Haddarah: history and cultural heritage reserved through many activities, helping in increasing the Tourism income,  historical tourism trips, workshops and lectures about history, traditional craft,costumes, music workshops, ...etc establishing a folkloric traditional library, empowering women to produce traditional items and products to sell.

4) My Music "Musicati": high society morals and standards, better life opportunities to disabled people, active orchestras and ensembles in the society,  conducting different music classes in different locations, big number of music therapy sessions,  issuing qualified certificates for participants.

5) Jordan let's help: better living conditions,  fulfilling the needs of dis-privileged stakeholders, supporting and encouraging vocational work, small projects and economics developments through stable jobs.

Our main barrier is the financial one, the whole project through the five years has been supported from our personal pockets, and that is why the project is successful but limited and didn't reach more stakeholders as it should. We need to hire a team to help executing many activities for the benefit of the project consequently the stakeholders, we need a good marketing channels and advanced technological methods and applications, and all the above needs sustainable financial aid, which is our main and major barrier.

As mentioned before our main barrier is the financial support and aid to help us spread and reach more stakeholders, we are trying to find grants to support the project and we are planning to do a fundraising events trying to get support as much as we can, for now we are still covering the expenses of the project from our own pockets.

Jordan Let's Live project is very difficult to get revenue from since its all fulfilling the needs of the stakeholder for better future and since we are aiming at people from disadvantage areas, and the activities of the project is offering services, so its impossible to get revenue, so only fundraising events and grants can help us grow and spread more. 

Our project works with many organizations and governmental sections on voluntary basses,for example we work with the Jordanian Hotel Association and the Restaurants Association, also the Ministry of tourism, I was invited by  the Royal Court to talk about our project and discuss its positive impacts on the society, we work with the Ministry of Education and other association concerning reservation of heritage and many other organizations.

Jordan Let's Live (JLL) project with its initiatives is a community service project offering services and fulfilling needs for better future. JLL concentrates on utilizing technology to fulfill human needs in the most easy and feasible way to reach as many stakeholders as possible through social media channels like Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram, starting with Economical development and stability: through Jordan let's Work we are offering good working opportunities, good training. Tourism: tourism constitutes around 13% of the national income, this sector needs support to encourage local tourism and attract international tourists, so through Jordan Let's Eat & Check In & Haddarah & Jordan Event we offer voluntary visits by big number of people (paying from their own pockets) to visit all outlets, hotels and historical places, promote them, give them a genuine review to help them raise their standards and services, creating local trips to encourage tourism, support entities by sharing their events.

Empowerment & Education: many members in our community specially women, youth and disable needs special program to offer them better opportunities in life so through My Music we offer vocational training, education, music therapy for disable persons, all the above activities takes into consideration the environment's needs and try to adhere to it.   Environment: climate change and other related issues to environment. 

As mentioned before we cannot do any revenues, because we only offer services and opportunities for the community stakeholders to help them get a better life and help our country.

Hence we need to find a sustainable grants plus keep investing in the project from our own money and do a variety of fundraising events. 

For funding purposes, all funding through the five years was done from our personal accounts and as much as we can afford to support the project, the team of the project right now are all voluntaries and they help as much as they can, we didn't get any funding till now.

Hence we didn't do any revenues also, we only offered services and opportunities for the community stakeholders to help them get a better life and help our country.

We are looking for a grant, Jordan let's Live project is a community service project offering services and fulfilling needs for better future.

To work in full capacity with an adequate team and the right technological methods and applications to reach as many stakeholders as possible for one year we need around $300,000 $450,000.

Since the prize is less than the needed amount and for two years we will try to find other resources to cover the needed amount, or cope with the amount offered.

The project's expenses concentrates on the manpower and technology, since the project concentrates on utilizing technology to fulfill the needs.

Our estimated yearly expenses to work, grow and spread more are $300,000 -$450,000 which includes technology, salaries, rent, monthly expenses..etc all the project needs to operate and develop more.

As mentioned before our major barrier is funding, and increasing marketing channels to reach more stakeholders. The Elevate prize can help a lot if our project was considered a Hero project and won the prize, this will cover two years which will help and support the project too grow and spread more, beside the Elevate prize can offer a tailored media and marketing campaign which we are in need for to amplify work and grant recognition around the globe, also providing professional management coaching mentor ship and access to dynamic network are highly needed to our project. 

Our partnership goals concentrates on the major aspects that will help our project to grow, which are the financial support, marketing and media support, Monitoring and evaluation support, and mentorship or coaching. The financial support will help us recruit a  good number and qualified team, and help us to grow, spread and reach more stakeholders, and to start new technology methods and applications to develop and offer more services to our community, also having a marketing and media support is important for the project as mentioned above to reach more stakeholders, and spread more, coaching  will allow us to reach our goals and spread our services globally, beside evaluating our services and stakeholder satisfaction supported by you, will help the project a lot, since what we are doing now is limited  due to our small resources but with your help and support we can do much more.   

Each Initiative under Jordan Let's Live have its own needs:

1) Jordan Let's Eat & Check In & Haddarah: we are looking for partnership with Ministry of Tourism or Jordan Tourism Board, Restaurant and hotels associations, all the mentioned entities have a very big role in advancing our work and spreading it more to get the right positive impact.

2) Jordan Let's Help: we need to partner with the Ministry of social development in order to get the right information for people in need and what exactly is needed.

Also we need to partner with international organization who is specialized in technology applications to help us grow, and of course a financial support partner is always needed.