Rama Kayyali

Rama Kayyali Jardaneh and her business partner, Lamia Tabaa, came up with the idea for their company 10 years ago, when Rama had just had her first son. ‘We began to talk about the lack of engaging Arabic language audiovisual content for children. All the video and television programs for young children were produced in the West or Japan and never localised, even when dubbed into Arabic.’

With backgrounds in TV production and documentary film-making, the two women decided to make an Arabic-language children’s film, The Animals Around Us, which they screened locally in Jordan, expecting about 200 people. ‘We were shocked when 600 turned up. We had to show the movie four times!’

Early learning

This promising start led them to found Little Thinking Minds to produce Arabic language education and early literacy audiovisual content. ‘The first five years of a child’s life are so important for cognitive development and language skills,’ says Rama, ‘and too often in schools Arabic takes a backseat to learning English.’ With help from the Oasis 500 incubator, where they learned about the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards from previous finalists, Rama and Lamia began to work on the company full time in 2011, once other professional and family obligations had subsided. Now they have a full-time staff of five.

Little Thinking Minds offers a variety of content, including videos, online games and mobile applications. One of the company’s most popular products is a two-part DVD that uses animations to teach children the alphabet in Arabic. ‘Sadly, general Arabic teaching is not very engaging, lacking fun graphics and interactivity,’ says Rama. ‘Little Thinking Minds provides a holistic educational experience for kids where they watch the video content, play games related to the concepts learnt, sing songs and use worksheets.’ All focused on their region and its indigenous species and habitat.

In 2013, the company signed a distribution agreement with VIVA Entertainment, the largest DVD distributor in the Middle East, which has made its products available in eight countries and the regional Virgin Megastores and Carrefour hypermarkets. Two audio CDs are available through iTunes as well as videos that can be viewed via a mobile application. Approximately 30% of the company’s sales are digital, notching up 1 million views, while the rest are in-store.

A love of language

The company has raised US$230,000 from three regional investors and will use these funds to expand, notably into e-learning. ‘Being incubated sometimes feels like doing an MBA, but we still need business mentoring on matters like how to scale and how to develop in the e-learning sector,’ says Rama, who is looking forward to the coaching process for the Awards. Meanwhile, she intends to stay focused on her original objective: ‘to improve the use of Arabic for primary school students and increase Arabic literacy.’ She is concerned about forecasts that say the Arabic language could die out within the next century. ‘We need to foster children’s attachment to the language from a very young age.’