Shireen is a local high school student who has volunteered extensively in the West Bank and Lebabon. She became interested in refugee work through her personal visits to Palestine, and through her mother's work with refugees and refugee law. Amahl and Nidal are affiliated with Lajee Center in Aida Camp, West Bank. Amahl is an anthropologist, documentarian, and volunteer with Lajee Youth Center in Aida Refugee Camp, Palestine. Nidal is a Palestinian refugee who was born and raised in Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem . He is a volunteer at Lajee Center, a youth center in Aida camp.
Despina, her guests, program founder Sherif Fam (1936-2010), Stan Robinson, Steve Cornie, and the entire staff of WZBC
According to their website âLajee Center (âlajeeâ means ârefugeeâ in Arabic), was established in Aida Camp in April 2000 by a group of 11 young people from the Camp who wanted to serve the community. It is an independent, Palestinian, non-governmental organization, registered with the Ministry of NGO Affairs of the Palestinian National Authority in 2001. The main aim of the Center is to provide refugee youth with cultural, educational, social and developmental opportunities. Its programs are designed in response to the particular needs of the children and the skills and abilities of its membersâ¦Lajee organises cultural, social, artistic and athletic activities for refugee youth in the Bethlehem area. While our activities are currently concentrated in Aida Camp, we already have some participating children from Dheisheh and Azza Camps, and Bethlehem and Beit Jala cities. We hope to expand our activities to include more children from the surrounding area. We hope also to increase the number of volunteers from the area; currently our volunteers include one person from Bethlehem and one from Azza Camp.The Center aims to develop social awareness in refugee youth. It structures and implements its activities in such a way as to eliminate discrimination against women. Activities are organised with the goal of fostering in the participants a wider understanding of the world in which they live, focusing on issues relating specifically to their own society, culture and history, as well as the global context. Our hope is to develop the social awareness of the children, deepen their education and provide them with the critical skills necessary for them to take on an active role in their society.â For more information, please visit www.lajee.org.
Through their media efforts, Lajee Center has also created radio podcasts made by refugee youth . According to their website, www.radiolajee.com is the home of an exciting new series of podcasts by Palestinian refugees aged between 11 and 22 years. Established by Australian new media enthusiast, Daz Chandler, in collaboration with the Lajee Centre, the independent project aims to provide the refugee youth with the skills necessary to create a weekly, English language podcast.The concept was born in June 2008, when Daz met British photographer, Rich Wiles, who was in Sydney to promote a photographic exhibition by Palestinian refugee youth. The pair discussed the dearth of positive stories about Palestinian people, the sense of isolation felt within the refugee camp, the bias inherent in much of the western mediaâs coverage of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and whether the so-called âblogging revolutionâ was the most practical answer to truly democratic news and communication. Needless to say, it was a long conversation⦠and although the two didnât come up with a conclusive answer, it did result in the formation of www.radiolajee.com. Rich had a long standing relationship with the Lajee Centre - established in Aida Camp in April 2000 by a group of 11 young people wanting to provide refugee youth with cultural, educational, social and developmental opportunities. After a bit of too-ing and fro-ing the collaboration became official. On the 1st of November 2008, Daz Chandler arrived in Bethlehem, met the team of enthusiastic podcasters at Aida camp and commenced the radio workshops. The workshops were structured to cover the fundamentals of podcasting, from sound recording to presentation and interview techniques, through to audio editing, program structure, new media possibilities and online marketing. Visit the home page to hear the first installment of RadioLajee and while youâre at it, be sure to meet the Radio Lajee team. Help us spread the word about RadioLajee and assist in making this cyber-based loud-speaker as deafening as possible!
These questions were posed to guests Shireen, Nidal, and Amahl:
1) How did you get involved in working with refugees?
2) What kind of work do you do with refugees?
3) How have refugees responded to your efforts?
4) If refugees were able to provide 3 key messages to our listeners, what would those messages be?
5) Do you have any other parting thoughts for our audience?
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