Rising Youth from Refuge

On Saturday June 14th, Young Syrian Refugees shared with us their own stories and elaborated through Drama and Brainstorming interactive exercises their deepest thoughts ! On Saturday June 21st, a collective work of leafers and Syrian Refugee Youth liberated through colors and illustrations on walls. "Refuge, Home, Community, Heroes and Friendships" were keywords of the themes projected by the youth, on the 14th. All these artworks were conceptualized in collaboration with Danish Refugee Council in Lebanon at Old Saida city. Worth mentioning, the neighborhood warmly welcomed our leaves, on walls, on stairs..

" Coming from Lebanon, a country that has been welcoming refugees from Palestine since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, I knew how bad a refugee’s life could be. Well at least I thought I knew. Even though we live in the same country, refugees in Lebanon have an appalling social and economic condition. They were forbidden to work and therefore they didn’t have access to any kind of social aid given by the government and of course no easy access to hospitals and schools. 

Today, Lebanon is not only welcoming Palestinians but also a lot of Syrian families who have been escaping the civil war in their country since 2011. 

Currently, and according to the United Nations’ refugee agency, the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon exceeded 1 million, without counting the non-registered refugees.  This number would be definitely massive in any country. For Lebanon, a small nation, the impact is shocking. 

Syrian families can be seen everywhere in the capital. They live on the streets with their kids and try to survive day by day. "While every refugee's story is different and their anguish personal, they all share a common thread of uncommon courage: the courage not only to survive, but to persevere and rebuild their shattered lives." As the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres described.

After seeing in what conditions those people are living in, I thought about helping them. Helping them, but this time not by giving them money, food, clothes… It is certain that these refugees are in an enormous need of money. But they also need a house, a shelter, food, jobs, going to school, proper life conditions! What can we do about this? Yes we can give them money, maybe food and clothes sometimes. Still, kids are being held by bunch of Mafioso that tries to collect money from them. Kids are not going to schools and a whole generation of children just lost the meaning of being a child. They just lost their only chance to be innocent, carefree to be children once. The war took everything from them.

I had the chance to do something for these children while working with I leaf Art on two projects concerning Syrian refugees.  And this time we tried to give more than what money can give. 

On Saturday June 14^th 2014, I worked with I leaf Art’s crew and around 30 young refugees. Note that most of them were Palestinian refugees from the Yarmouk camp in Syria, which means they were already refugees back in Syria.  

We started by dividing them into two groups; a group for some brainstorming interaction to exercise their deepest thoughts and a second group to share their own stories and elaborated them through a small Drama act.
Not surprisingly, their stories and their deepest thoughts illustrated the war and their miserable life conditions. 

he small act was all about this “Abou Mohammad” who lost his son, got injured and escaped his country with his wife and daughters. He was in an urgent need for a surgery and of course no hospitals in Lebanon would let him in without paying a deposit. It all ended, when his oldest daughter came and told him that she could work to get the money for the surgery.  Every kid in the group agreed on the story. And saw in it something very personal. Most of them actually shared the same life. After presenting the scene, we held a discussion and pushed the kids to find solutions for those common refugees’ problems. Again, those solutions illustrated what those kids are dealing with everyday. They know which association can help them, who to call, what to do. And they acted as adults regarding saving the life of “Abou Mohammad”. At this point, I realized how much can the war take from a child.  

On Saturday June 21^st 2014, this time we tried to give those children a little hope after what the war did to them. Again with I leaf art, we tried to add colors to their lives.  In old Saida, “Refuge, Home, Community, Heroes and Friendships” were the keywords of the project. Superman, a warming neighborhood and some colorful stairs were added to these children’s dark memories of the war. "

                                                                                                                                Written by Lea Kodeih

                                                                                                                                                                     Volunteer Leafer - Summer 2014

Political Sciences Student - Menton (France)