Facts
Project: Children of Al-Jalil Center (CJC), Baalbek – Libanon
Reported: March – April, 2016
Al-Jalil Center (CJC), provides support for Syrian children who receive daily schooling and weekly activities at the CJC. During January – February 2016, 246 children aged 6-14 years, came to CJC, to participate in our training programs. At the start 73 of the children could neither read or write.
The children come to the center to study Monday – Thursday, their focus is to study:
– Mathematics.
– Arabic.s
– English.
– Computers / Programming.
Also – psychosocial activities (games, drawing, crafts, etc.) are included for all children every Friday and Saturday. We also conducted workshops on children’s rights for the children to understand and know more about their rights.
Children of Al-Jalil Center is supported by Rights Now, enabling the organization to sustain the activities for the children who are refugees from Syria. Among other contributors is: OXFAM.
Below is an excerpt from the full report, and please view pictures below as well.
Weekly activities
The children are provided some structure in their lives by being part of the camp and receive education and psychosocial activities. All children take part in daily education focusing on different subjects: Arabic, Math, English and Computer. CJC teacher’s divided them into groups. The first group who can read and write come to the centre in the morning, while the second group (73 children) come to the centre afternoon to study.
Storytelling
In April, a CJC trainer facilitated workshops for the children to share their stories and experiences while fleeing from the war in Syria.
During the first day, the children were taught the skills of story telling by writing, drawing, etc. On the second day, all 19 children started to share their stories:
– About their daily life in Syria before the crises.
– Their daily life in Syria during war.
– Their time and often hard suffering in Lebanon as children living in a refugee camp.
This is Mohamad’s story.
He came from Syria to the center. He can read and write arabic with some difficulty, but he isn’t able to read or write in english. He started by saying;
” I’m Mohamad, 13 years old, Syrian who live in the village Daraa. I have 6 brothers and 2 sisters”.
Mohamad told his story at the CJC workshop on story telling, he started to describe his war journey from Daraa to Damascus, the sounds of bombs and rockets. He remembers when they bring his father to their house. He dies, being shot many times. After that, Mohamad started to cry and didn’t continue to tell more about his experiences…. (But he was comforted by his teacher and well cared for).
Field trips
On March 27, 80 children aged 9-14, participated in a trip to Baalbeck ruins/castle and a lunch in the Ras El Ain garden where Al Jana was organizing a show with clowns and some outdoor games for all the children.
On April 4, 82 children aged 6-14, participated in a trip to the amusement park in Jeb Jin for a two hour visit and lunch.
The children were very happy, especially the kids aged 6-9.
Conclusions
We, CJC, can say that the project at the center is providing direct results of improvements for the children in terms of reading and writing, and this is making their daily lives and their future easier.
CJC staff, the children and our community – thank Rights Now for the support and look forward to more cooperation and community development.
Facts
Project: The Ad.dar Center in Istanbul, Turkey.
Reported: October 10th 2015–January 24th 2016.
Therapeutic Workshops for Syrian and Palestinian children, organized, facilitated, and overseen by the Ad.dar staff. Weekly workshops held at the Ad.dar Center in Istanbul.
The number of children grew every week and the need is so great that we added additional classes during the weekdays for young teenage girls (ages 10- 14 years). The families have expressed their gratitude many times for the workshops- many of the new children are not in school and cannot attend for varying reasons. The time at Ad.dar is a great help to the parents and the children. In early November some of the young teenage girls came to us and asked if we could give them additional classes during the week – they are not in school and they have a great desire to learn. We immediately began classes for them on Mondays and Fridays- Arabic, Turkish, English, Music and Art/Photography/Storytelling.
On average we spent 12-15 hours a week with the children in workshops and on excursions. In addition to this workshop (on Saturdays and Sundays) we held 3 hours of tutoring the children on Sundays and 4 hours of classes twice a week for the young teenage girls. The extra excursions included; a trip to the Istanbul Aquarium, a day of bowling and out for lunch, an Art workshop at The Salt Gallery designed for kids and held by Syrian and Turkish artists, a ferry ride and picnic on the Asian side, a trip to a forest with a picnic and a trip to Istanbul Modern Museum. Between 25-30 children ages 5-12 participated in all of the weekend activities. Relationships with new families were established and existing relations with parents developed, strengthening Ad.dar Center’s accountability and stimulating interest in our other outreach programs.
The funds received from Rights Now enabled our center to effectively carry out the goals of our proposed workshop. With the generous funds received for this workshop we feel that we have greatly improved our workshop in general. Ad.dar staff is better equipped and trained, our center has more tools to help with teaching, and the number of children that attend has increased. We have felt comfortable responding to the needs of the young teenage girls to add classes and to be able to provide a warm, open space and to offer hot and nutritious meals.
Ad.dar Center would like to thank the Rights Now Foundation for the opportunity to accomplish the workshop.
Watch a video from one of the workshops by Ad.dar: