“TELL ME...” is a project in which Palestinian children, aged 7 to 14 years old from Shoufat refugee camp in East Jerusalem and Al Saraya community center in East Jerusalem spent 10 weeks creating a collaborative book focusing on who they are and how they live. The book includes work from every child who took part with a chapter for every individual participant in English with captions in Arabic.  The book features photographs, which the children have taken, and stories that they have write.

Each child was matched up with an international patron, someone from around the world who is interested in the lives of Palestinian children.  These patrons were asked to submit a brief autobiography and to ask 5 questions of the participant with whom they are paired, to which the participating child responded with photographs and stories.

It is a voluntary project run by Paula Jones, (NZ) Tamara Azizian (NZ) and Nidal Shalodi (Palestine) and has been funded by us to date.

Program Description:  

Tell Me… team and community center volunteers ran workshops as an after school activity for 2.5 hours, one afternoon per week.   

Workshops included camera-technique training, creative writing exercises, and transferring of ideas and imagination onto paper and through the lens. 

Tell Me… provided participants with cameras to use outside of the classroom, to take photos of what each child viewed as important to her/him.  

As homework, the participant had to think through and write about each photo, explaining the motivation for that image. In addition to learning techniques and skills, students played games and participated in group activities, including role-playing using props.  

For Tell Me... students the act of writing was not just a form of communication but also a means to make sense of experiences and gain a deeper understanding of who they are. The combination of the creativity of the process with the achievement of something tangible increased feelings of self-confidence and self-value. Thus creative writing has been recognized as a form of therapy for the students.  

 

The books are due to be published in Ramallah and will be ready mid April.  The Qattan Foundation have agreed to pay for the publishing.  We hope to sell the books and the proceeds will go toward the next TELL ME project which will be a collaboration between 30 NZ children and 30 bedouin children from al Jahaleen bedoiun community.

 

We have  facebook website called the TELL ME Family and people are most welcome to join to support us.  We need second hand cameras for the children to use and we will be selling the first lot of books end of April

 

Update 5th Mach 2010:  Our much anticipated 4th trip back to publish the books has been postponed due to illness.  Unfortunately I have been hospitalised with a virus in my spine and am unable to walk, just a temporary setback...Ill be up an about in no time, but we have a couple of wonderful friends in Ramallah who are going to oversee the process for us so the books get done in time.  Thanks to Mohammad and Shadi!!

talk soon.

I hope you all are well.

Paula

NZ 

 

 

2. Shufat Camp, my friends by the wall by Adam - 10 

3. "Foola" at shufat .taken by Faeqa - 14

4.  Bedouin children at Al Jahaleen

5.  Karmar's Dad's pigeons - Shufat camp by Kamar 12