On May 11th, 2023 UNDP Jordan Accelerator Lab and the School of Applied Humanities and Languages (SAHL) students from the German Jordanian University visited Madaba city as part of their collaboration in mapping the tourism services, assets, and stories of Madaba Governorate.
The collaboration aims to model a different way of implementing sustainable development and accelerate learning through exploration, local solutions mapping, and experimentation. To achieve the first mapping project, SAHL visited Madaba city. During their visit the students were able to experience a hands-on learning process by using the information they learned from the UNDP training on how to use the research and data collection tools conducted on Tuesday 9/5/2023 during their Contrastive Cultural Studies Course.
Moreover, the Accelerator Lab is a network of 90+ labs. Since June 2022, the Jordan Accelerator Lab has been working on ways to improve tourism in the Madaba governorate by introducing new tourism experiences and products.
The trip began with the grouping of students into three groups where each group was dropped off in their assigned location (A: Carrefour Madaba, B: Greater Madaba Municipality ,C: Madaba Institute for Mosaic Art and Restoration). The duration in each location was two hours. The students were responsible for finding and recruiting people-getting their consent -interviewing or surveying people-taking photos and/or videos with the person’s consent-recording audio. The topics covered by each group were existing tourism offerings such as (“solutions”), assets and skills such as Airbnb, guest house, tourism experiences (food, walking tours, day immersions), and stories such as everyday human stories, stories of places, urban legends and folklore. Thereafter, the students uploaded and filled the information they collected on online Microsoft Forms created by UNDP for data entry.
In conclusion, the field visit to Madaba City has proved to be a win-win opportunity for SAHL students and UNDP where both sides were able to carry out a mapping experience as per the accelerator lab's mission in recruiting creative and skilled students to help with the lab's research, and in turn students gained practical experience which could help them in their future careers. In addition, the UNDP Accelerator Lab considers giving SAHL students priority for a future internship opportunity with their team and will reward them with certificates of participation once they complete their two visits to Madaba Governorate.