Iqrali — AI-Personalised Arabic Story Generator Driving a National Early-Reading Habit Shift in Jordan

Jordan's Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development (QRF) built Iqrali ('Read to Me'), an early-childhood platform designed to build daily parent-child reading habits, after baseline research found that fewer than 1% of Jordanian parents read to their children daily and that most under-six children spend the bulk of their day with their mothers.

The platform includes an AI feature that generates personalised Arabic children's stories using a child's name, age and interests, alongside a resource library aimed at parents, including refugee families in Jordan.

The beta launched in November 2024. In November 2025, Iqrali won second place and $300,000 in the WISE Prize for Education, a $1 million award administered by Qatar Foundation's World Innovation Summit for Education, confirmed independently by Jordan's state news agency Petra and by regional education outlet Al-Fanar Media.

QRF reports that 52% of parents who used the app began reading to their children, and that the beta stood at roughly 2,000 monthly active users and 500-plus downloaded resources as of November 2024. QRF states the platform could reach up to 1.25 million Jordanian children aged 0-5 if scaled nationally.

The 52% outcome figure is self-reported by QRF rather than independently re-measured, though it was assessed favourably by the WISE Prize's judging process. Coverage is inconsistent on whether the AI story-generation feature was already live or still in development at the time of the November 2024 reporting, and the programme is not targeted at girls specifically.