Social justice workshop & visit to Al-Badan

I had been asked to assist with a social justice workshop running this afternoon. Had I been doing this in English I could have thought of something to keep the class entertained for a few hours off the top of my head. Unfortunately (from my point of view) the learning that needed to take place wasn't related to the English language so the session was delivered in Arabic. After a one hour session delivered by a local teacher I showed the group the Amnesty International animated UDHR film clip. After much searching and finally giving up and contacting AI directly I managed to obtain a link to the film in Arabic. I managed to download the film onto my computer and I managed to get the film to play through the projector. When it was time for the group to watch the film the projector would no longer play the clip and we couldn't get it to work (so the same as a usual lesson back home then...) Luckily one of the Palestinian volunteers came to the rescue setting up his laptop and transferring the film from mine.

Though I obviously couldn't understand the langauge in the film I hadn't anticipated that some of the Palestinians might find it difficult to. When I spoke to the translator after the session she commented that the first few points were wasted on her as she was still trying to tune into the language. The Arabic being more Egyptian than Palestinian. The whole point was that the rights are animated so I'm hoping that I still managed to get the point across.

After the film I of course reverted to type and got the group to go through the little red riding hood activity. This was infinitely more difficult than usual as I had to go through a translator with every explanation but we seemed to get there in the end. At first the appeal from both sides was to build a wall but a big cheer went up when the mediator suggested that they learnt to get along and share resources instead. Perfect result!

After the workshop about 40 of us boarded a coach to Al-Badan. The main reason for this being the long term volunteers that are leaving tomorrow. So the group was a mixture of Project Hope staff, local volunteers and international volunteers. We had a good, chilled out afternoon sitting in the sun and eating too much food. There had been a few rumours about what the place was like and a lot of miscommunication. The 'swimming pool' turned out to be more of a pond you could paddle in at a stretch and the 'water slides' were slides on a children's playground. Highly amusing all round.