Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

You are here: Home » Peace efforts » Children and youth with special needs » "Together we build a better society", Tripoli, Lebanon 2009 » Report by Maysa Mourad

Report by Maysa Mourad

Sara Minkara and Maysa Mourad

August 18 2009

It is very hard to describe the experience of the project Empowerment through Inclusion—Together We Build Society in a nutshell, but one thing is evident it was an unforgettable learning experience!

The whole idea originated from Wellesley College, the institution I claim my loyalty, respect and inspiration to.  At Wellesley, I worked for the Disabilities office as a reader for Sara Minkara.  I knew my interests lay strong in the education field and sought this job to be an initial start of my learning experiences. I had the dream and hope to return one summer to Lebanon and carry out a “grassroots peace project” that involved the Lebanese community. I knew that I wanted the organizations of my country involved, the youth, the children, and my family ! I turned to Sara, whom I knew was particularly interested in promoting the rights and inclusion of blind children into society. The challenge was how to create, and implement a project that related all our interests and objectives, a challenge to which now I can turn back to and say yes, we accomplished it to a large extent! We wrote out our project based on three goals: establishing a  network of volunteers from the universities of North Lebanon, putting a camp’s curriculum with the volunteers and the NGO, the Youth Association of the Blind, and thirdly, implementing the project/camp at Collège National Orthodoxe. Humbly yet proudly I can say, that our project won two highly reputable awards, the Clinton Global Award’s Outstanding Commitment Award of Education and from Wellesley College, the Emily Greene Balch Award.

I had arrived in Lebanon after my finals at Wellesley College. It was a crucial time in Lebanon, a time when elections were to be held in a week. I had started meeting with the NGO we were working with, The Youth Association of the Blind (YAB). Mr. Amer Makarem, the president of the organization is one of the most respectful humble men that I met. He promoted our ideas, and encouraged the project highly! Furthermore, I set up a meeting with Fidelity insurance, who were extremely supportive of the project and decided to insure all the participating children! During these weeks, I was in touch with political organizations and associations trying to set up meetings to ask for their collaboration in the project. Despite the crucial time pre-elections, I give my gratitude to the Safadi Foundation that had set up meetings with two main universities in the north.

I held a few information sessions at universities, but something was missing, the presence of Sara. I was speaking in both of our names! When Sara arrived to Lebanon, we fulfilled the image of the role models we wanted! One of the main objectives of the camp was inclusion of persons with disabilities, and how Sara and I were working together and setting up this project was inclusion in the making.

We managed to get different sponsors and supporters for the project. A local restaurant sponsored the food for the camp: from the opening to the everyday sandwiches to the final day celebration—it was great ! The political party Tayyar al Mustaqbal sponsored the transportation of the children, the main excursions, the leaflets of the project, the everyday expenses of the activities, and the volunteer travel stipends for people who lived far from Tripoli!  Fidelity insurance insured our children, a center for the visually-impaired in Norway sent art materials, and another organization offered their blind music teacher to teach coral to the children!

In terms of my feelings towards the camp, I believe our goals were achieved. The children’s smiles were a constant reminder of the happiness, fun and excitement they were experiencing daily. As for the volunteers, their commitment, sensitivity, and yearning to create and implement was phenomenal.

When I look back to the goals that were written on the leaflet , I can say that personally, I felt they were all fulfilled !

ESTABLISHING A NETWORK OF VOLUNTEERS:

 

SUMMER CAMP PROGRAM:

ENVISIONED GOALS OF CHILDREN’S CAMP:

 

As for the Kids’ Guernica experience, Mrs. Iman Mourad had the role of introducing the concept of peace to the children and the volunteers. From understanding the words of the title of the camp, “Together We Build Society”, she took that to be a starting point to integrate the foundations of teamwork and community-building. She initially focused on the verbal expression of what working together entailed from respect, to sharing, to giving space to the other, to tolerance— all of which lay the ground and means for a pluralistic society. From the workshops of understanding what peace entailed to repeating the camps name out loud and repeating also what makes the “teamwork peace” of the community, things worked; it was phenomenal to see how the constant repetition of teamwork was something the children expressed loudly and constantly with a smile. Activities such as coloring together and creating crafts to packing the coloring pencils and the papers, to putting away the garbage after lunch, teamwork was loudly expressed and reminded of! Funnily, Mrs. Iman was labeled Madame Salam, which means “Madam Peace” and whenever the children saw her they repeated the slogans of “Together We Build Society”. What was interesting was how the children began to understand how peace as a theme was beyond just anti-war, for it is peace of our hearts and peace in our surroundings that counts in terms of working together!  One activity that was very touching was how Mrs. Mourad spread a green rope in the playground that marked the size and parameters of the Kids’ Guernica canvas. We sang around it the Lebanese anthem and the songs the children learnt in the camp. We then had different children come up hold the loudspeaker which they all loved to hold and say what peace meant for them. Then we made the children lie on the ground and had the other children outline their bodies with chalk! I believe this activity allowed the children and the volunteers likewise to physically understand the size of the canvas we were going to paint on. Furthermore, how the bodies filled the space of the canvas showed how Together We Build Society, and together we can paint the white canvas. Sara and I, along with three other children, had the idea to express peace in books and education. We believed how books and education symbolized the sprouting tree to understand ourselves better, our communities and the global world we live in. The whole Kids’ Guernica experience allowed us to see how everyone was working together creating, drawing, thinking, and painting. We hope that such collaboration can be transformed by departing from this peace experience to making the political roundtable of the country more tuned in with peace requirements. We believe that working together is the key to the peace of our country. We hope that the idealism of such a learning experience can lay the path to our peaceful future. It is great to know that the symbols, themes and expressions of our camp will continue to be spread from country to another through the mobility of the peace painting!

^ Top

« Diary of Iman Mourad | Overview by Sara Minkara »