Our Voice – Refugee Youth Magazine is a new initiative recently launched in the West Bank as a way to show the diversity of occupied Palestinian voices:
Through this project Laje’oon Center (popularly known as Lajee Center) will establish a solid network of active Youth and Cultural Centres from 6 refugee camps, spread across 6 major West Bank population centres. Lajee is proud to be working with Yafa Cultural Center (Balata Camp, Nablus), Lest Not Forget Center (Jenin Camp), The Childrens’ Center (Qalandia Camp, Ramallah), The Childrens’ Social Center (Aqabat Jabar Camp, Jericho), and The Palestinian Children’s Cultural Centre (Al Fawwar Camp, Hebron).
The current first year of this project will see Lajee Center establish a team of qualified professionals in a range of subjects including Human Rights, Democratic Citizenship and the Rule of Law, Gender Equality and Women’s Rights, Journalism and Principles of a Free Press, Conflict Resolution, and Photography. These professionals will run an ongoing series of workshops with 15 children of mixed gender aged between 14-15 years old in each of the respective participating centres. These workshops aim to develop in each project participant a sound understanding of each subject, and place them in a position from which they can begin to produce coherent and articulate text-based and photographic essays to be included in a collaborative quarterly magazine which will enter into publication in the last quarter of 2009 and continue through the project duration stretching through to the end of 2011. The second and third years of the project will see the initial project participants joined by further groups from each participating centre, leading to a final total of participants which will reach 210 refugee children/youth from across the West Bank working collaboratively by the third year.
Our Voice – Refugee Youth Magazine will be a bi-lingual magazine in English and Arabic facilitating both national and international distribution, and consequently dispersion of the participants collective voice.
This is an important way for us to hear Palestinian refugees explain their lives and experiences.