Human rights Adenvent Calender

Hi everyone,

Christmas is soon. In connection with this we had the idea to create a Human Rights Advent Calendar. So we planned to design the cover of the Advent Calender and put a human right in every single box. During our work we started to talk about the girls' interests. We wanted to know what kind of activities they would like to do in the future with us. So Erica, the teacher, had the idea to have a little stall in the school like a Christmas Market. There can sell some stuff from CADFA like olive oil, zatar and CADFA cups and tell other people about our work.  After a long discussion about the date we decided to do it on December 16.

Next week we want to finish the Advent Calendar and start to create posters and leaflets to publish our plans. I think its a really cool idea and I hope a lot of teachers and students will visit our stall.

Dunja

Discovering the wall

On Tuesday 25,  I visited the school La Sainte Union to continue with the 'Human Rights Lunch Club'

I prepared some questions about 'the separation wall' and some CADFA leaflets to show. The aim of  the session was to discover the history and the reasons about why they built the wall.
The students opened their computers and they started to search for some answers and at the same time we talked about the things that they were funding.

It was interesting to hear them talking about their feelings that the wall produced, because it is good not to  forget what is happening in Palestine. Some people expressed fear, or pain, horror, etc. and everybody  condemned the illegal construction.

At the next lunch club we will finish the questionnaire and continue enjoying and learning about Human Rights and Palestine.  I want to say 'thank you very much' to the students and I hope we will have a very interesting time together!

Emilio  Sanchez. 

1.Where is the wall? It is in the West Bank along the armistice line, also known as 'the green line' and also in Gaza.
2.When did they start to do it? The Palestine's wall began construction in 2002.
3.Who is building the Wall?
4.What do the Israelis say about the reason for building it?
5.And what do you think?
6.How long is the wall? When completed, the wall will be 700km long.
7.How high is the wall?  The wall is 8m high.
8.What's the reason for it being double the length?
9.What Human Rights have they broken?
10.What is the international community saying about it?

Stories from Abu Dis Girls

Hi from Palestine!

Isobel and I are the current EVS volunteers who are working in Abu Dis Girls school to build the twinning links with Camden and to help the girls improve their spoken English.
It has been a bit of a slow start to due to holidays, strikes and exams, but we are finally really enjoying getting to know our group of girls.
We have 13 girls from Grade 9 who have opted to join the 'English Club'. Their language ability varies but they are all very keen to learn.
Our first session was an introductory class, playing games with English words - to have fun and to establish their level - and asking them questions about what they would like to do in our sessions together. They are particularly interested in talking about the Palestinian situation and hearing from students in the UK. They also had lots of questions for us!

We have decided as a group to explore the different ways in which we can tell stories. We had a lesson talking about films. The girls learned about characters, settings, genres and plots and discussed Palestinian and English films. In another lesson we imagined that we were filmmakers. The girls thought up stories set in Palestine and learned words such as occupation, separation wall, army, demonstrations and prisons. We helped them create storyboards as if planning to make their films. Here are some photos of their sketches. Many have taken them home to carry on working on them.

One story was about a girl called Francisco who thought she was in love. She was very sad because everyday she went to school, longing for Mohammad to love her, but he did not. One day, 'A Happy and New Day', the girl went to school to discover Ahmed truly loved her and she realised that it was him she had loved all along. They walked home together, hand in hand. But on their way, they were both shot dead by the Israeli army. Ahmed and Francisco died happy.

 

A story of a married couple where the husband, Ahmed, is imprisoned. His Wife then takes revenge by killing an Israeli leader, but when Ahmed is finally released, he is shot dead.

 

The class.

 Damage to the classroom by the Israeli army.

Our next class is going to be about stories via the spoken word.The girls are bringing in something from home that is special to them. They will present about this to the class. We will send over some of their stories!

The girls look forward to hear stories from Camden!

School links

Youth links are really important because students are the future.

So CADFA works in a lot of schools. LSU, William Eills Parliament Hill Camden School for Girls, Regent High School, Haverstock, Hampstead, Acland Burghley. These schools are Twinned (a special kind of link) with schools in Abu Dis, Palestine. They have set up blogs so that they can communicate with each other. We are really excited to go into the schools. 
We are EVS (European Voluntary Service) volunteers from Spain and Germany. EVS volunteers from Palestine and volunteers who have been to Palestine go into schools too. CADFA organises visits to London for school students and teachers from Abu Dis. When they are here they go into schools as well and do lots of activities with the students here. 

We have been enjoying getting to know Camden. Camden is a vibrant and multicultual place. One of it’s highlights is Camden Market where you can buy almost anything! Here you will find a statue of the famous signer Amy Winehouse. The house where she lived is just down the road from the CADFA office in Kentish Town, another part of Camden. If you want to bump into celebrities  then  the place to go is definitely Primrose Hill, a quieter area near Regent’s Park. Famous people also lived here in the past. Charles Dickens wrote his book Oliver Twist in his house in Camden, which is now a museum. Camden also has lots of drama schools and theatres. Camden isn’t just full of people- London Zoo is also here.

Yesterday we went to Parliament Hill. When we looked one way we could see the whole of London, when we looked the other way it felt like we were in the middle of the countryside! The area around there is lovely and Emilio is definitely making plans to live there at some point in his life! 

                                                       

Abu Dis school students visit Camden!

In early October,  school students from Abu Dis Boys' School and from the Arab Institute were part of a CADFA group of visitors to London and the north of England.  It was a great visit for them and for us in London. 

Their project blog is HERE.

As part of their visit they went to schools and youth clubs. This is a picture of them and school students at a school in Pendle, Lancashire.

In Camden, they met many young people and several students from LSU took part in the visit.  

Their visit included 

a lunchtime visit to LSU!

and an assembly at Camden School for Girls. The young people made a presentation about their lives in Palestine. After that they had a tour of the school and were really impressed.

Response to you questions

Hi! We hope you are all well? Thanks for the questions.

How the wall affects us directly:

The main thing that affects us day to day with the wall is not being able to visit places we love in our own country. We love Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque is such a special place to us but we are unable to go there unless we apply for special permission which is not easy to get. We also wish we could go to the sea but despite the dead sea running down the side of the West Bank, we are stopped by checkpoints which means we can’t get to it. Some of us have family living the other side of the wall and it is very difficult for us to visit them. They have to come to visit us because we are given ID cards which means we cannot pass the Wall to get to them. Entire families were divided up when the wall was built and are still separated by it.

What time we wake up to go to school:

The school day here starts at 7.30am so most of us get up at about 6.30am.

How long it takes to get to school:

We all live in different places so it varies. Some of us live in nearby towns and get a bus and others walk because we live in Abu Dis.

Our favourite singers:

We can’t all agree but One Direction and Mohammed Assaf got the most mentions!

Our favourite subjects:

We all enjoy school but our favourite subjects are all different – Religion, English, Sport and Arabic were quite popular.

Our daily routine:

Our daily routine is to wake up at 6.30am and eat breakfast then go to school at 7.30am. We have four classes then a break followed by three more classes. We finish school at 1.30pm. At home we pray, eat lunch and either see friends or watch TV and spend time with our families.

We hope that answers your questions! Please let us know if you have anything else for us J

New girls at the lunch club

Hey Hey!

There are four new girls at the lunch club in LSU school....they dont' know much about Palestine yet so they had plenty of questions to ask you!

We started to tell them about Palestine through objects and pictures which began to show a little bit about Palestine . They were amazed by the smell of Arabic coffee, the number of "holy places" in Jerusalem and the story of the wall. We spoke a lot about it during the last session, and one of the girls ask a really good question : '' Why the wall is built inside the Palestinian territories? '' We answered it  and explained all of the difficulties the wall brings to the Palestinian people.
Maybe you would like to answer this questions yourselves?
They would like to know more about you and about your daily life in Palestine....here are their questions:

"How does the wall affect you directly?"

"At what time do you wake up to go to school?"

"How long does it take you to go to school?"

"What is you favorite singer?"

"Do you enjoy school? What type of subjects do you do?"

"How is life at home? And what is your daily routine?"

Can you let them know more about it? Hope to hear from you soon!

Making an animation about life in Palestine

Today we started making an animation film about life in Palestine. The girls came up with their idea for the story they wanted to tell through the animation to show what life is like here. Once we made the storyboard (the plan for the film) we started drawing the pictures which we will then be able to photograph and turn into a short animation film. Here is where are up to so far...

Me Shahd and Lucıle went to LSU school, we made an event called (  a taste from palestine) we brought palestinian food such as kiba,Hummus,Falafel and Tabula.There were 12 girls and Aricka.First of all, we talked about palestine in general and about our situation,we showed the girls a palestinian map of how it was and how it had become.The girls responded and asked questions and it was really interesting.Then we invited them to get involved in our Human Rights club.
Secondly, we invited them to try the food and they liked it so much and they said that they would like to have more information about the palestinian life style and what's going on in palestine. We showed them pictures about our traditional dress and told them about our culture.
It was very nice and hopefully we will have more people who are interested .

Daily School Life in Abu Dis

This week at Abu Dis Girls School we asked the girls to write about and draw pictures of their daily school life.

They talked about what time they woke up, what they had for breakfast, what they did at school and any after school activities. We took pictures of the posters they made and the uniforms they wear on a daily basis.

We wondered how much everyday school life differs between here and England. Perhaps we can exchange information on what they differences and similarities are.

What is it like to go to school in Camden vs Abu Dis?

Today at Abu Dis Girl’s school we spent our first class getting to know each other. Waad, Manar, Ashar, Sahar, Shahed, Tamara, Ghida’a, Malak, Shaden and Khadeeja told me a bit about themselves and then we chatted about what they would most like to ask the girls who go to Camden School for Girls. They said they would like to know what it is like to live in London as a school girl and had lots of questions about what school is like there.

We thought it would be nice to make a ‘day in the life of a school girl’ blog about Abu Dis Girl’s School with photos so that you can see what school is like today in Palestine. And it would be great to have the same back!

The things they most wanted to know were:

-          Do you like school in London and what do you like most/dislike most?

-          What time do you wake up, start school and finish school each day?

-          What does your uniform look like? (maybe we can have a picture?)

-          What subjects do you learn and do any of you learn Arabic?

-          What do you normally eat for lunch at school?

 

Human Right Media School

We went today(Suzan, Safia, and Selina)to Camden Girls School to talk about a project called Human Right Media School which will be held on the 14/02.
Selina talked about it, and some of the girls were so interested about it and they asked about the applications, so We have given them the leaflets and the application form to fill.
We are waiting for this project :)