Page 27 - MY Book - My Voice

feeling of mastering that can incite the will and eager to learn.The refugees from Syria are in a di erent situation than those who have dropped out of school. Theyare prevented from attending school because of lack of space or for economic reasons.The refugees from Syria that I met in my workshops, were eager to study, but didn’t have the chanceto do so. They were sad and quiet. In all the drawing and writing exercises they referred to their former life in Syria, how it used to be, everything they had to leave behind, and people they had lost. For those children, creating a book is a way to be seen and recognized as a person with abilities and talents and with a past. It gives them an opportunity to tell us who they are, other than what we see, a refugee.For the teachers and social workers, the goal is that they will pick up some ideas and methods that will be useful for them in their daily work.The rst morning, in the April workshop, the participant entered the center a bit nervous and unsure of what would happen. The participants were girls, mainly between 13 and 15 years old, and two older girls at 18 and 22. Most of them were refugees from Syria who do not attend school. We did some games and introduce ourselves before we started drawing. We did warming-up exercises, and the atmosphere had become more relaxed when we started to draw, using reference photos. We drew trees. Next, we talked about trees, and I asked, through my co-worker Ghada Kassim, if anyone had memories or experiences connected to trees. We gave some examples, a tree in the garden giving shade, working picking fruit, and a tree you always pass on your way home. We also talked about the roots of the tree and our own roots. Some of the participants started to write their stories at once, while some hesitated and didn’t like to write and continued drawing. Some worked hard to write a few words, others wrote several sentences. Someof the refugees from Syria lled the page writing about their roots and their former life in Syria. We also drew people and houses, and we did still life drawing by placing di erent fruit on the table.It was inspiring to see the eagerness of the children and youth, doing their best and working hard. They wrote and drew with concentrated seriousness, expressing things important to them.At the end of the second day of the workshop, we prepared the book cover, and the third day it was time to collect the pages, organize them, and sew them together before gluing them to the book cover.The sewing process is di cult, the participants needed to follow instructions carefully, as it requires a great deal of accuracy. When needed, some of the social workers and teachers helped the children.For some of the children the book-binding proved quite di cult, it is a bit frustrating doing mistakes, wait for assistance, and have to redo some steps, but when everyone had nished, it was heartening to see how satisfying it was for them to have overcome the di culties and created a whole new book by themselves.In the second workshop, in September, the group of children was slightly younger, between 8 and14 years old. This time it was a mix of boys and girls, both Syrian refugees and local children. Several children attended school, but do not like it at all. Some of the boys had to work as well, after school,to help their families. Apart from some minor adjustments, the content of the workshops in April and September was the same. The children engaged from the rst moment, in games and warming up exercises, drawing and writing. The group impressed me a lot by being enthusiastic and hard working. They kept working for hours in hot summer temperature, without electricity for AC and no running water in the tap. They waited patiently for assistance when needed and everyone completed their own book.25