Benefitting country(ies): Jordan

Overview:

The Bedu have preserved wide-ranging knowledge and skills related to the area around Petra and Wadi Rum, including traditional medicine, camel husbandry, tent-making craftsmanship, tracking and climbing as well as rituals of coffee-making and oral traditions reflecting their mythology.

The principal goal of the project is to safeguard the main features of the lifestyle and oral expressions of the Bedu that have developed in two selected areas of Southern Jordan (Petra and Wadi Rum region) over the course of millennia and that are being lost due to inevitable societal changes.

The action plan revolves around two projects:

• The collection and intergenerational transmission of oral heritage;
• The transmission and adaptation of knowledge and know-how related to camel and weaving, two “pillars of bedu culture”.

The main beneficiaries are communities of settled and mobile bedu living in and around the sites of Petra and Wadi Rum.The action plan is being implemented by the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development through its network of community development centers in the regions of Petra and Wadi Rum, and through several independent community-based associations.

01/01/2005 - 01/03/2009 – Safeguarding of Nha nhac, Vietnamese Court Music01/04/2007 - 01/03/2009 – Action Plan for the Safeguarding of El Güegüense