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 .