Exploring Equality and Human Rights in Jordan with Podcasts Sowt’s intervention will be a multifaceted project that promotes press freedom and encourages public dialogue. Through the avenue of quality journalism, this project will focus on gender equality issues, socioeconomic rights, and freedom of expression. 

In this project we expect an average of 1,000 downloads per episode, or over 70,000 listens. In social media, we regularly engage 350,000 people per week. We expect these metrics to increase over the length of this project. We will use listens per episode as a main indicator to measure our reach. 

Content Production
Sowt will produce the podcast Eib, a narrative-driven podcast that explores gender-related topics rarely discussed in the public sphere. The show’s previous success — the number one podcast in the Middle East on iTunes — attests to both the need for this type of boundary pushing coverage and a dialogue on gender equality in Jordan. This show serves to diversify voices present in the Jordanian media landscape, but also foments a meaningful public dialogue about issues pertaining to gender equality. Sowt will produce two 10-episode seasons of Eib, a total of 20 episodes. 

The two 10-episode seasons of Mal 3mal will be a narrative-driven dive into Jordan’s labor laws, labor conditions, and wider socioeconomic issues around the country. This show will foster a conversation around the intersection of the working-class experience in Jordan with Jordanian labor laws, highlighting instances where the law, or a lack of application of the law leaves workers in Jordan exploited on issues such as the gender pay gap and minimum wage.

The final show, Harrer, is a new show Sowt will launch. This show will revolve around journalists and writers themselves to promote the public’s ability to relate to journalists. It will dive into how journalists cover stories, giving listeners a behind-the-scenes look at the stories they read about, or ones they do not usually read about, in an attempt to increase the trust in journalism. This show will serve to highlight the work of journalists around the country, but also to give listeners an understanding of how journalists work, the difficulties of reporting in Jordan and their goals. 

For this project, we will be conducting an outreach survey in order to better understand the nuances of our audience, as well as their demographics. This will help us strengthen our work and produce content that matches our audience's needs more closely. 

Training
To further develop the capacity of audio journalism in Jordan, this project’s second component will be three trainings for eight to ten participants. Sowt will hold trainings during each year of the project. They will cover all aspects of audio journalism production, including technical and editorial skills. Sowt will actively encourage participation of individuals from across Jordan, going beyond the capital, Amman. Following each training, Sowt will work with the participants, who are able to contribute to the project to produce at least 5 episodes per training. 

Community Engagement
Finally, Sowt will open up its space to community members, every two months, a total of 18 times over the lifetime of this project. They will listen to the episodes together, discuss ideas from the shows, as well as invite the hosts, the guests, and producers to learn from each other and build community. 

Additionally, we will host a live awards ceremony to recognize outstanding podcasts, including performances of lives podcasts. The ceremony will be hosted by Sowt at a local venue. Preceding the ceremony participants and the regional community will be asked to vote for podcasts under different categories and the winners will be announced that night The overarching objective of this project is to strengthen the role of media as an important pillar of  civil society, and thus support independent and diverse media as the foundation for development outcomes such as transparency, accountable institutions, gender equality, economic growth and vibrant civil society. Our content is consumed by younger people in Jordan and around the region, and is typically accessed through mobile phones. This project proposes three podcasts with each show targeting a different audience. For the show Eib (عيب), the stories and the narrative-driven format attract a wide audience including youth, not just those working on these issues. 

The second show, entitled Mal 3mal (ما العمل), is done in a first-person interview style that draws in a larger audience, not just policy professionals. 

Our third show, Harrer (حرر), will feature in-depth interviews with journalists and writers about their work and experiences. We will target young people as well as those who read/watch the news and are interested in the field of journalism, in an attempt to generate more faith and confidence in media and journalists. 

The community listening events and trainings will target groups including activists, civil society members and journalists. These events will serve to facilitate conversation amongst these groups, and allow for more direct and deliberate interaction with the issues presented. Additionally, hosting a live performance and podcast awards ceremony will further develop the regional podcast community and audience.